President Donald Trump called the U.S. attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran a “tremendous success” and warned during a roughly three-minute White House address that if Iran’s government does not “make peace,” “future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” the president said, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Remember, there are many targets left.”
It’s a significant statement from the president, who rose to power in part through his heavy criticism of the Iraq war after his initial support for the U.S. invasion.
The president said that the objective of Saturday’s strike was to destroy the three sites — Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan — and he reported to the American people that they had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
The president celebrated the military’s capability, while suggesting that there could be more to come.
“There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There’s never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago,” the president said. “Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity,” he said after thanking the pilots.
The president’s remarks were light on details — specifically which munitions were a part of the attack, how many planes were used or why he launched the strikes after publicly giving Iran a two-week window for diplomacy just two days ago.
The president announced the strikes just after 8 p.m. EST on Saturday, more than a week after Israel began attacks on Iran. Israel had claimed that Iran was close to assembling nuclear weapons — something U.S. intelligence has challenged.
From the White House, Trump spoke to the history of the moment — as Saturday marked the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that the U.S. has used the Air Force to target major facilities in Iran.
Trump justified the attack by repeating that Iranian officials had widely used anti-American slogans like “death to Americans,” as well as their history of sponsoring terrorism around the globe, calling them the “bully of the Middle East.”
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to Americans, Death to Israel,’” the president said. “They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate.”
But missing was a direct appeal to his base, after the possibility of a strike had exposed fissures in the Republican Party between its more isolationist and interventionist wings.
In response, the White House doubled down on the president’s decades-long stance that it was unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
“I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen,” the president said in his remarks on Saturday. “It will not continue.”
—
Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.