Updates with remarks from President Donald Trump
The US conducted air strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran, President Donald Trump said Saturday evening.
US bombers targeted the heavily fortified, underground facility at Fordow and sites at Natanz and Isfahan, Trump said on his social media platform.
"The strikes were a spectacular military success," Trump said in a televised address Saturday night. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier."
Trump waited until after the US planes had left Iranian airspace before making the announcement.
Israel's air and missile strikes, underway since 13 June, had already targeted those three facilities, in addition to some domestic energy infrastructure and urban areas across Iran. UN nuclear watchdog the IAEA on Friday warned of potential nuclear safety hazards from the ongoing Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities and cautioned Israel against targeting Iran's Busherh nuclear power plant and a nuclear research laboratory in Tehran.
Washington-based military experts assessed that only the US Air Force had the right type of munitions to destroy Fordow.
Involving the US in the Israel-Iran war is a watershed moment for Trump's presidency. Trump in the past decade has often lambasted his predecessors for involving the US in costly and fruitless military adventures in the Middle East. But he has changed his tune since the beginning of Israel's offensive on Iran, claiming that eliminating Iran's nuclear program was worth the US involvement.
Trump, in his televised address, referenced the US' killing of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 — the last time US and Iranian forces directly exchanged fire.
Tehran's response at that time involved missile attacks on US bases in Iraq that wounded more than 100 US military personnel, but drew no heavy US retaliation.
The markets will closely watch Tehran's reaction to the US air strikes.
Even before the US bombing raids, Trump's public musings about a possible US role in Israel's campaign against Iran in the past week spurred the oil industry and shipping sectors to increase the risk premiums embedded in their calculations.
Most immediately at stake are Iran's 2.5mn b/d of crude, condensate and products exports, which mostly head to China. Oil markets are also concerned about the risk of contagion if Israel and the US draw retaliatory attacks elsewhere in the Mideast Gulf or jeopardize shipping through the strait of Hormuz — the global oil market's single most vulnerable chokepoint, through which pass about 17mn b/d of crude and products, or about a quarter of seaborne oil trade.
