In the early hours of Sunday, American warplanes and submarines launched coordinated strikes on three key nuclear facilities deep inside Iran, an action that pulled the United States directly into Israel’s widening conflict with Tehran and risked igniting a broader regional war.

President Donald Trump, in a televised address, justified the attacks by citing the need to dismantle Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities, branding Tehran once again as “the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.” Declaring the operation a success, he claimed that the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

The targets included Iran’s two principal enrichment centers – the heavily fortified underground facility at Fordo and the sprawling Natanz plant, which had already come under limited Israeli attack days earlier. A third strike hit a site near Isfahan, reportedly home to stockpiles of near-weapons-grade uranium. While Iranian officials acknowledged the attacks, they withheld detailed assessments of the damage.

Trump warned that the U.S. was prepared to carry out further strikes. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he stated. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

Iran had previously cautioned that any American military involvement would prompt swift retaliation, potentially targeting U.S. personnel and assets across the region or accelerating its nuclear program. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking from Europe, offered a measured but ominous response: “Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people.”

Meanwhile, air-raid sirens echoed across Israeli cities as Iranian ballistic missiles rained down in response. At least ten civilians were reportedly wounded, the latest in a series of retaliatory exchanges since Israel’s surprise offensive on July 13.

And The Initial Responses

The diplomatic shockwaves were immediate. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the strikes as “a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge and a direct threat to international peace and security.”

On Capitol Hill, partisan fault lines reappeared quickly. While top Republicans rallied behind Trump, applauding the strikes as a firm stance against nuclear proliferation, senior Democrats and a few Republicans warned that the president had acted unilaterally and perhaps unconstitutionally, setting the stage for another protracted American war.

U.S.-Israel Joint Strikes Mark a Tactical Shift, But At What Cost?

Now turning to Israel, in what is now being framed as a “coordinated operation,” Israel and the United States appear to be operating in near lockstep. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites were executed “in full coordination” with the U.S. military, an admission that dissolves any illusion of American neutrality in the conflict and formally drags Washington deeper into Israel’s war.

According to U.S. officials, six B-2 stealth bombers dropped a dozen 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s heavily fortified Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep in the mountains. Simultaneously, U.S. Navy submarines launched 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles targeting the nuclear complexes at Natanz and Isfahan, the very heart of Iran’s atomic enrichment effort. One B-2 also delivered two more bunker busters on Natanz. These were not symbolic strikes but years-in-the-making attack plans, suddenly activated.

Yet, just a week earlier, Trump was publicly equivocal, hedging his decision and fueling confusion. He had floated that he would take up to two weeks to decide whether to enter the conflict. Instead, he moved unilaterally and swiftly, bypassing Congress and coalition partners.

From Tactical Threat to Full-Scale War Posture
With Trump’s decision, the Pentagon has been jolted back into high alert. The United States, which spent two decades trying to extract itself from endless conflict in the Middle East, now finds itself re-entrenched. Over 40,000 American troops are already stationed in the region, a sitting target for the retaliatory fury Tehran has threatened to unleash.

A senior U.S. defense official confirmed the use of the GBU-57 — a weapon never used in combat before. The “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” as it’s formally known, is designed to punch through reinforced underground bunkers.

Fordo was always beyond the reach of Israel’s military capabilities; only the United States possessed the bombs and the aircraft required to strike it. Until now, no administration was willing to pull that trigger.

Trump just did.

Mixed Reception in Israel, Unified Caution Everywhere Else

In Israel, even the fractured political establishment found a rare moment of consensus. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar hailed Trump’s decision, claiming he had “written his name in golden letters” into the history books. Opposition leader Yair Lapid agreed calling the move “right for Israeli and global security” but also added pointedly that it was now time to end the war, suggesting that even among Israel’s hawks, escalation fatigue is setting in.

Meanwhile, Iran has responded with a flurry of missile fire and a simultaneous diplomatic counter-push, offering to resume nuclear negotiations. But this is unlikely to calm the waters especially when the Pentagon acknowledges that, though no follow-up strikes are planned, they are ready for “swift retaliation” should Iran respond militarily.

The Strait of Hormuz: A Powder Keg Waiting for a Spark
The real fear now is not just a regional conflict but a global crisis. Iran, cornered and humiliated, still holds a card that could disrupt global oil flows: the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow 90-mile channel sees nearly a quarter of the world’s oil and 20% of its liquefied natural gas pass through. If Tehran mines the waterway, a threat it has repeated, energy markets could spiral, dragging the global economy into recession.

American minesweepers are already repositioning. Warships are dispersing. It feels less like prevention and more like bracing for the inevitable.

“Not a Declaration of War”, But Will Iran See It That Way?
In an effort to soothe fraying nerves in Europe and beyond, Trump’s aides insisted that this was not a declaration of war, likening the operation instead to a precision strike akin to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. One senior European diplomat, however, pointed out the obvious contradiction: bin Laden had killed 3,000 Americans; Iran, at this point, had not even built a bomb.

Framed as an act of self-defense or more accurately, preemption the administration seems eager to draw moral lines where none may exist. Because while they may argue that they struck a “program” and not a “regime,” Tehran is unlikely to parse the nuance. Especially not after its central nuclear infrastructure has been bombed by the world’s most powerful military, under the full glare of the global stage.

A Show of Power and a Shift Toward Militarized Diplomacy
Flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Saturday night address was less presidential reassurance and more thinly veiled threat. “There will be either peace,” he declared, “or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

He openly warned that the United States had “many targets left,” essentially holding out military annihilation as a negotiating tool. That posture blurs the line between deterrence and escalation and signals a pivot toward a diplomacy that is increasingly carried out through missile strikes and media theatrics.

This marks a sharp departure from earlier U.S. efforts to restrain Israel from dragging America into a regional war. Initially, the Trump administration distanced itself from Israel’s strikes on Iranian commanders and nuclear figures. Secretary Rubio had even emphasized that those were “unilateral” actions by Israel. But within days, Trump veered sharply off-script, casually musing online about America’s ability to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader and ultimately following through with full-blown participation.

A Weak Iran, a Weaker Strategy?
What emboldened Trump’s hand appears to be the dramatic erosion of Iran’s regional influence following Israel’s retaliation for the October 7, 2023 attacks. Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran’s most prized proxies, are now shadows of their former selves. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has fled. And Iran’s traditional allies – Russia and China – have gone conspicuously silent amid the Israeli onslaught.

Sensing this rare vacuum, Trump may have calculated that now was the moment to break Iran’s nuclear backbone. But the risk is that he’s treating strategic weakness as strategic collapse and misreading Iran’s ideological resolve. Because for Tehran’s ruling regime, the nuclear program isn’t just about weapons it’s a symbol of sovereignty, resistance, and survival.

The last time Iran stood defiantly against a superpower, it was 1979. Fifty-two American diplomats were taken hostage. That legacy of defiance through asymmetric warfare has defined Iran’s strategic doctrine for decades.

The Bigger Risk?

Iran has yet to show its hand. But even in its battered state, Tehran still has cards to play and none of them bode well for peace. Its long-range missiles can strike U.S. bases, its naval fleet can sow chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint of a quarter of the world’s oil supply and its proxies, from Iraq to Syria, could be reactivated in a heartbeat. Any one of these moves could draw America deeper into a protracted conflict.

The humiliation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (on a matter considered sacred to the regime) makes inaction almost inconceivable. Whether through symbolic retaliation or a long-term strategic pivot, Iran will respond. And with each step, the chances of miscalculation rise.

The Dangers!

Some observers speculate that Trump and Netanyahu may be aiming for more than just Iran’s uranium stockpiles. They may be betting on the collapse of the regime itself. But here lies a peril that history has taught well: the fall of autocratic states often gives way not to peace, but to chaos. Should the Iranian regime crumble, a new, more extreme leadership may rise perhaps from within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose hardliners are less bound by diplomatic niceties and far more comfortable with open conflict.

And should the regime hold, it may turn inward, unleashing another wave of brutal repression against its own citizens, a desperate act by a wounded power determined to project strength, no matter the human cost.

Thus, for many Iranians, the fear is not just war but what the regime might do to its own people in the name of survival.

The Ghosts of Iraq and Afghanistan 

What’s unfolding now has disturbing echoes of the early 2000s. The Iraq and Afghan wars, launched with swift and stunning military might, descended into decades of bloodshed, instability, and nation-building that ultimately wore down American resolve and influence. Trump’s decision may have been more surgical, more targeted, but the lesson remains – it’s easy to start wars in the Middle East,  far harder to end them.

Trump had once vowed never to repeat the mistakes of those wars. But this strike, launched without congressional authorization, international coalition-building, or public buy-in has tied America’s future to a regional firestorm with no clear off-ramp.

Even if the immediate military goal has been achieved, it is the unknowns that now hang heavy.

The Last Bit,

History will likely frame this moment as a hinge in U.S.-Iran relations, a chapter written with bunker-busting bombs and hastily drawn red lines. And historians may one day ask if this crisis could have been avoided or handled with more foresight.

Because if Iran now withdraws from the global nuclear framework, goes underground, and races toward a bomb like North Korea once did, the strike on Fordo may be remembered not as a victory but as the beginning of a long, unstable chapter of nuclear brinkmanship in the Middle East.

Trump’s strike on Iran may go down as a strategic boon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long agitated for direct American military involvement. Lacking the capability to destroy Fordo himself, the Israeli prime minister started a war he knew his country couldn’t finish, betting, accurately, that Trump would. And Trump, ever the dealmaker in search of legacy-defining moments, obliged.

Ironically, the man who campaigned on ending America’s wars appears to have opened a new front and despite the massive scale of this operation, there’s an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Once again, the U.S. has launched an aggressive strike in the Middle East without a clear exit plan. Once again, it has done so on the basis of opaque intelligence and unilateral presidential decision-making. Once again, the justification is preemption, not response.

And once again, the consequences are unknown but they are unlikely to be contained.