Trump Announces Strikes on Iran, Urging Iranians to ‘Take Over Your Government’

President Donald Trump announced early Saturday that the U.S. military was undertaking “major combat operations,” striking Iran in a massive bombing campaign.

The strikes began just after 1 a.m. ET, first with strikes by Israel and then the U.S. Trump said the targets include the nuclear program, the missile program and the Iranian Navy. Strikes were reported within Tehran, a densely populated city of about 10 million people. Israel reportedly targeted senior Iranian leaders.

“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” the president said in an 8-minute video posted to Truth Social at 2:30 a.m. “Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”

In a nod to regime change, the president urged Iranians to “take over your government” once the bombs stopped dropping.

“This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump said. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond.”

Iran retaliated soon after, saying it had launched a drone attack at Israel. Strikes were reported on multiple countries in the region, including at a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain.

“As we have already stated, any base anywhere in the region that assists Israel will be a target of the sacred Islamic Republic and our armed forces, and we will show no hesitation,” Iranian state-affiliated media quotes military official Abolfazl Shekarchi as saying, according to CNN.

Kata’ib Hezbollah, a militia in Iraq allied with Iran, told The New York Times it would retaliate after three people were killed by strikes on its bases.

“We will soon begin attacking American bases in response to their aggression,” a leader of the militia told Times.

The president had grown frustrated by the slow negotiations between Iran and U.S. negotiators over Iran’s nuclear program.

“It’d be wonderful if they negotiate in good faith, but they are not getting there,” Trump said of the Iranian government Friday afternoon. “I’m not happy with the way they’re going.”

Those remarks came soon after Badr Albusaidi, the foreign minister of Oman who served as the mediator between Iran and the U.S. in high-stakes negotiations, flew to Washington to argue against military strikes.

“If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations,” Al Busaidi told CBS News in an interview on Friday. “And I think if we can capture that and build on it, I think a deal is within our reach.”

He posted Saturday morning that he was “dismayed” by the strikes.

“Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined,” Al Busaidi posted on X. “Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.”

For weeks, U.S. officials had complained that Iran would not discuss its missile program nor other key issues outside of nuclear enrichment.

“Iran possesses a very large number of ballistic missiles, particularly short range ballistic missiles that threaten the United States, our bases in the region and our partners in the region,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Wednesday, declaring that they are solely to attack Americans. “Iran refuses to talk about ballistic missiles to us or to anyone, and that’s a big problem.”

Iran’s government has been in power for nearly 50 years, surviving multiple U.S. presidents who have long hoped for, if not outright sought, regime change.

In his taped address to the nation, sporting a white USA ballcap that partially covered his eyes, Trump recounted years of attacks from Iran or its proxies against America or its allies as the administration seeks to justify its strikes.

“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted Death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries,” the president said. “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.”

The president said that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and that at the end of the campaign, the missile program would be “raised to the ground” and “totally obliterated.”

The U.S. previously struck Iran last June, in a short campaign focused on its three known nuclear enrichment facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. At the time, the White House said repeatedly that the sites had been “obliterated,” despite classified assessments that the program had been damaged but not destroyed.

Earlier this month, the administration alleged that there was evidence to show the Iranians were attempting to restart enrichment, though independent assessments could not corroborate that fact. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff even said earlier this week that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.”

Asked to reconcile the difference between obliteration and being one week away from major weapons, a White House official told NOTUS “you’d be surprised” at how quickly weapons can be made.

The president warned the American public that casualties may occur in response to the strikes, preemptively blaming it on an Iranian regime that seeks to kill Americans, despite the U.S. and Israel being the first to strike.

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties, that often happens in war. But we’re doing this, not for now — we’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission,” the president said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.