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President Donald Trump addressed the nation just after 10 p.m. Eastern Time following the U.S. military’s successful strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities.
“A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” he said.
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘death to America. Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular,” Trump continued.
Trump’s address followed him announcing just on Thursday – via his press secretary Karoline Leavitt – that he would make a decision on whether to strike Iran within a two-week period.
“I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, ‘based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,'” Leavitt said at a White House briefing quoting Trump.
Trump has repeatedly urged Iran to make a deal on its nuclear program before striking its nuclear facilities, but the country pulled out of ongoing talks with the U.S. scheduled for June 15 in Oman and refused to return to the table in the days following. Israel preemptively ordered strikes on Iran on June 12 as Israeli intelligence indicated Iran’s nuclear program was rapidly progressing.
TRUMP DECLARES ‘VERY SUCCESSFUL ATTACK’ ON IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM AS US FORCES STRIKE 3 KEY SITES
Trump announced on Saturday evening via a Truth Social post, which was not preceded by media leaks, that the U.S. had carried out three successful attacks. Fox News’ Sean Hannity reported on Saturday that the U.S. used six bunker-buster bombs —each of which weighs 15 tons — in its strikes on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. The bombs were dropped from American B-2 stealth bombers. Additionally, 30 tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. submarines were used in the attacks on the Nanatz and Isfahan facilities, he reported.
TRUMP PROMISES TO RESPOND WITH ‘FULL STRENGTH AND MIGHT’ OF US MILITARY IF IRAN ATTACKS AMERICA
Ahead of the Saturday evening strikes, six B-2 stealth bombers from an Air Force base in Missouri appeared to be en route to a U.S. Air Force base in Guam, U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News on Saturday.
Fox New’s Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said during an appearance Saturday evening as news broke of the strikes that reports of the bombers were likely part of the “misleading tidbits put out there to suggest that maybe President Trump had had put off the decision.”
“Those six B-2 bombers that were heading west towards Guam, they would not have made it to Iran in time to take part in this strike. So, that suggests to me that there was an additional B-1 package that perhaps flew eastward from Whiteman Air Force Base. Again, this was all part of the deception. There was a great deal of sort of misleading tidbits put out there to suggest that maybe President Trump had put off the decision and that this would happen two weeks from now.” She said this while speaking with Fox News’ Bret Baier on Saturday evening.
ISRAEL’S ACTIONS AGAINST IRAN CREATE STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY FOR US IN NUCLEAR TALKS, EXPERTS SAY
Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on Iran on June 12 after months of attempted and stalled nuclear negotiations and subsequent heightened concern that Iran was advancing its nuclear program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared soon afterward that the strikes were necessary to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”
He added that if Israel had not acted, “Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.”
Dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” the strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and killed a handful of senior Iranian military leaders.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.
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