The U.S. and Israel were striking Iran on Saturday morning, with Iranian media reporting explosions across the capital Tehran.
President Donald Trump said U.S. forces have begun “major combat operations in Iran,” in an eight-minute video message shared on Truth Social.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” he said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s defense minister had said earlier that Israel had “launched a preemptive strike against Iran to remove threats against the State of Israel.”
Retaliation is expected, the spokesperson said.
“As a result, a missile and UAV attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate time frame,” the Israeli spokesperson said.
The strikes in Iran are significant, and are not small strikes, two U.S. officials told NBC News.
Iran’s airspace was closed early on Saturday, Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim reported, as smoke was seen rising above buildings in Tehran.
The strikes come after Trump oversaw a massive military build up in the Middle East while holding talks with Tehran aimed at agreeing a new deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
“It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in his video Saturday.
Iran vowed before the strikes that it would retaliate against any attack, threatening to target Israel as well as American bases across the region.
Other Middle Eastern nations have warned any attack could spiral into another major conflict for a region still reeling from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Trump raised the prospect of another attack on Iran after authorities cracked down on huge nationwide demonstrations, which erupted in December and January over the country’s ailing economy but morphed into demands for the overthrow of the clerical regime.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers.” Then he added: “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
The regime ended up crushing the protests, killing thousands and arresting tens of thousands more in the weeks afterwards.
Trump then threatened a military attack if a deal could not be reached with Tehran over its nuclear program — which the president had said the U.S. “obliterated” with strikes in June. A later U.S. assessment found these only destroyed one of three sites targeted.
More recently, the administration said Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear program, and that it could have enough fissile material for an atomic bomb within “a week” and that its ballistic missiles could “soon” be able to strike the U.S.
There is no publicly available evidence that Iran has made major progress in reviving its damaged nuclear program, including whether it has resumed significant uranium enrichment. The Trump administration has not specifically accused Iran of renewing uranium enrichment work.
Iran, which has always insisted that it has not pursued nuclear weapons, resists demands that it halt uranium enrichment or expand talks to include its ballistic missile program and support for proxy forces across the Middle East.
At the same time as holding talks with Iran, the U.S. amassed forces and built up its air defenses at bases across the region.
Trump sent the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to join another at the head of what he dubbed an “armada.”
Iran has already signed a nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was seen by supporters as a landmark agreement that provided transparency and confidence internationally that Tehran was not building nuclear weapons.
Trump and other critics saw the deal as weak, however, and claimed it would only delay Iran from obtaining a bomb. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the agreement.
