#nuclear facilities

The U.S. military conducted air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan on Sunday morning local time, President Trump announced.

Why it matters: Trump's decision to intervene directly in support of Israel's effort to dismantle Iran's nuclear program marks a historic escalation in the Middle East.

It's an intervention fraught with risks and uncertainty — one that Trump and many of his predecessors had sought to avoid, including through diplomacy with Iran.

The attack, which came on the ninth night of the unprecedented war between Israel and Iran, could provoke retaliation from Tehran against U.S. troops and military installations across the region.

Behind the scenes: Trump met with his national security team in the White House Situation Room on Saturday evening.

An Israeli official said Israel was notified by the Trump administration in advance of the U.S. strikes in Iran.

Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett said in remarks this week that she is supposed to make the “f***ing decision” about striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The clip of Crockett's insane remarks circulated X this week. The video starts with Crockett mid-sentence as she speaks to a crowd about President Donald Trump's decision on Saturday to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities.

“...and to understand enough about the Constitution to the extent that I’m the one who is supposed to make the f***ing decision or at least get a vote [to strike Iran],” Crockett can be seen saying.

Earlier this week, Townhall covered how Crockett threw a tantrum on social media after Trump ordered the strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. She filmed herself losing her mind about it and then posted it.

“I am a black woman in America who just happens to be educated enough to know what the law is,” Crockett said in her video. “If you Google war and authority and Constitution, you're gonna see Congress. He could have hollared at us on Monday.”

“Everything [Trump] does is against the law,” Crockett claimed.

If there is one thing we have learned about Donald Trump over the last 10 years – for New Yorkers, over the last 50 – it is that you cannot believe anything he says.

Anything.

If he said he was going to give Iran a chance to come back to the negotiating table and he would mull things over for two weeks, the Iran attack was going to happen in two days. If he called Saturday’s bombing Iran “a spectacular military success,” it was something less than that. If he said Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated,” they weren’t. If he said Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been ended, it hasn’t.

Trump toyed around with whether or not he was going to order the attack, telling reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday, “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

That was a lie, but it wasn’t a lie lie. It was a strategic feint. Any leader who is planning an attack on an enemy is going to try to seem like it’s either not going to happen, or the planning is in an early stage, when actually it is almost complete. That was the case with Iran.

Planning for the attack had been going on for weeks, and Tehran knew it. They probably started moving the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium, and the uranium they had already enriched, away from their three nuclear weapons development sites when Trump was elected last November. By the time he started bellowing that he would “never” allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, their nuclear material was safe somewhere else.

Trump tells so many lies every day, we only half listen to him. We have gotten used to tucking his lies away in mental rabbit holes so we can get ready for his next bunch of whoppers. But you want to know who has been recording every syllable that comes out of his mouth? The Iranians. They have spent years slowly accumulating enough partially enriched uranium that they have been within a year, or even within months according to some intelligence estimates, of being able to produce a bomb. Do you think they were going to let all that work go to waste just because the Americans were stupid enough to put the international clown, Donald Trump, back in the White House? Not a chance in hell. They were ready. They’ve been ready for months.

With Donald Trump, nothing is ever as it seems. Why does he tell so many lies? Is it because he can’t help himself, that it’s pathological? Not even close. He tells lies to keep his opponents guessing, out of step, off their game.

Even the war he just started with Iran is a lie, in that it has another purpose. I read somewhere over the last few days that all wars are started as much for domestic reasons as for their stated foreign policy goals. Why did George Bush start his war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Did he really believe that Iran had its own secret nuclear weapons program, or that they had developed a stockpile of WMD, weapons of mass destruction? No. He needed a war, and Afghanistan was not enough, so he ginned one up against Saddam.

Domestically, Trump is not in trouble, but he’s not in great shape. He can’t get interest rates down. He hasn’t whipped inflation. His Big Beautiful Bill is in trouble. His attempt to use Elon Musk and his DOGE-niks to conquer the budget deficit and save trillions in spending was an abject failure, with recent stories saying the whole thing is going to end up costing more than it saved. And his big plan to get tariffs to solve everything has failed miserably. All the stories about tariffs now lead with how Chinese President Xi Jinping has played him like a violin. He can’t even get his big ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants up to speed. There were reports early this month about Trump’s immigration hatchet man, Stephen Miller, “yelling” at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, ordering them to triple their arrests.

Trump’s war against Iran isn’t just about preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon. Like everything else, the war is about Donald Trump. He was going to drop that gigantic Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb from the moment he learned it existed. He needed that bombing campaign the way he needs golf courses and Diet Cokes and well-done steaks. He needed the White House appearance last night backed up by his war puppies, Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio. He needed his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon this morning giving out the numbers – 125 aircraft, 24 Tomahawks, seven B-2 bombers, 14 bunker busters – complete with map headlined with the mission moniker – this is so perfect, it’s all Trump – “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

You know what he’s doing, because he’s done it so many times before: Hey, look over here! Not only a big shiny object, a big shiny BOMB…which he puts in ALL CAPS every time he uses the word.

Because why? Because Donald Trump. The whole thing was Donald Trump all the time, all the way, from beginning to end. And it’s going to stay Donald Trump. You want to know why? Because now will come the analysis that the attack wasn’t as successful as he said, and he’ll be able to attack anyone who questions his genius. He’s already started, going after the lone Republican, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who strayed off the reservation today by claiming that the attack was unconstitutional. Trump started up a new SuperPAC to back anybody who wants to run against the poor guy. And woe be unto anyone who questions Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are done for. He’ll be able to throw around the T-word, “traitor,” if you dare point out inconvenient facts like reports that there was no measurable radiation produced from the bombing of the three nuclear sites. Not even a roentgen, according to the IAEA, was emitted from the destruction done to the Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Trump’s war puppy at the Pentagon was jubilant: "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated," Hegseth crowed at an 8 a.m. press conference at the Pentagon this morning. "The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant."

There could be good reasons for the peculiar lack of radiation from the damage done to three nuclear weapons sites. Maybe at Fordo, where satellite photos show six craters that look like someone stabbed the earth with an ice pick, the bombs went off so deep and caused such a collapse underground that they sealed off all the radiation. Maybe the same thing happened at Natanz, where another neat hole has appeared in the middle of an open field surrounded by a curving two-lane road.

We won’t know until the Pentagon does its BDA, battle damage assessment, and maybe not even after that, because which Iranian official is going to allow anyone onto any of the top-secret sites to check out the holes and maybe put a Geiger-counter on the gray dust?

Which is exactly the way Trump likes it. Who is going to question his chest-pounding assertions about his “brilliant” attack that has “obliterated” Iran’s dream of nuclear weapons?

Well, the Russkis, for one. Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, got on his Telegram account this morning and announced that other countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." He didn’t go into any details, but presumably that would mean Russia and its new war-buddy North Korea.

And then there is this possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, so I’ll just put it out there right now: What if Iran has already succeeded in producing a nuclear weapon? They haven’t let the IAEA near their nuclear facilities for a while, so what if Iran cranked up its 60 percent uranium to “weapons grade” 90 percent, and they went ahead and made one? And having made it, then squirrelled it away far from where they knew the U.S. would come a-bombing-when-they-come.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in this hideous tidbit. What if the Ayatollah, at age 86, is sufficiently infirm and hidden away that some Republican Guard maniac up and decides, hey, let’s lob our nuke at Jerusalem and see what happens?

Every military expert who can get himself or herself on the TeeVee has been yapping about how easy wars are to start, but goodness me, how hard they are to end. Well, I’m not on the TeeVee, but I’ll agree with the experts on that one.

But I haven’t heard many of them talking about what wars have this extra added little tendency to produce every time you start one:

Unforeseen consequences.

Get ready, because we are in for a few, and they come from a place where Donald Trump, no student of history he, has ever spent much time.

Donald Trump will be learning that it’s a brand new thing to lie yourself out of inconvenient facts like dead American bodies.

IDF fighter jets (@idfonline/X); Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. (@EYakoby/X)

It’s Thursday, June 12, and we’re the closest we’ve ever been to an all-out Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is far from the first time you’ve read that Israel is preparing to attack, so what makes today different? Let’s break it down.

In an interview released yesterday, the New York Post’s Miranda Devine asked President Donald Trump if he’s confident he can force Tehran to shutter its nuclear program. His response? “I don’t know. I did think so, and I’m getting more and more—less confident about it.” As for a deal, he was blunt: “I am much less confident of a deal being made.”

The president has good cause for concern. Today, for the first time in some 20 years, the International Atomic Energy Agency formally declared that Iran is violating its non-proliferation obligations.

Ok, so what? While Trump is no stranger to making threats and then not following through, he has been clear thus far: If Iran doesn’t sign a deal, its nuclear facilities will be attacked.

Then there’s the numerous reports that Israel is preparing to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities soon—and without American help. CBS News even claimed this morning that “U.S. officials have been told Israel is fully ready to launch an operation into Iran.”

Such readiness, according to these reports, is what prompted Washington to begin withdrawing non-essential personnel—both diplomatic and civilian—from the Middle East. In addition to evacuations, the Washington Postreported that “the State Department recently ordered all embassies within striking distance of Iranian assets… to convene emergency action committees and send cables back to Washington about measures to mitigate risks.”

And Iran seems to be getting the hint, with Reuters quoting a senior Iranian official this morning who claimed that a “friendly” country in the region warned Tehran about a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Ok, so an Israeli strike is really unavoidable? Not necessarily. While these signs seemingly point to the obvious, there’s two important caveats to keep in mind.

First, as is often the case with these developments, the information that makes its way into the public sphere is a mere fraction of what’s actually taking place. Indeed, when officials leak such comments to major outlets—there’s almost always an agenda involved.

What could that agenda be? There’s certainly one that stands out: To pressure Iran into signing a deal as a means of preventing an all-out Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Iranian here with another pro tip for anyone who’s not from the Middle East.

Contrary to what you've been told, Iranians were actually happy when President Trump bombed Iran's nuclear facilities.

Yes, you heard correctly. In fact, many Iranians in occupied Iran were upset when President Trump didn't continue the attacks aganist the Islamic Republic.

That's because the Islamic Republic is an evil dictatorship that has been holding Iranians hostage for the last 47 years. And let me tell you something else. All those "no war with Iran" demonstrations in the West? Those are people who actually support the Islamic Republic.

Everything you think you know about the Twelve-Day War between Israel and the Islamic Republic is probably wrong because you never got the Iranian perspective.

So, if you want to find out more about why Iranians were celebrating when President Trump bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran, make sure you tune into my daily livestream tomorrow on YouTube.

Iran’s nuclear program should be a target of Israel: Amb. John Bolton