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American warplanes bombed<\/span> three nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday night, bringing the U.S. military directly into Israel\u2019s war with Iran. \u201cNOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE,\u201d President Donald Trump incongruously wrote<\/a> in a social media post announcing the attacks.<\/p>\n Trump campaigned on ending foreign wars during his 2024 presidential run and has cast himself as a \u201cpeacemaker<\/a>.\u201d In his\u00a0second inaugural<\/a>\u00a0address, he pledged to \u201cmeasure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.\u201d Trump also regularly claims<\/a> to have opposed<\/a> the Iraq War from its outset. (He actually supported it<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,\u201d Trump wrote on TruthSocial<\/a>. \u201cAll planes are now outside of Iran airspace.\u00a0A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.\u201d<\/p>\n The aim of the attacks, American and Israeli officials have said, is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. intelligence community says that threat is not, however, real. <\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,\u201d reads the\u00a02025 Annual Threat Assessment<\/a> published in March. The assessment serves as the intelligence community\u2019s official evaluation of threats to \u201cthe Homeland,\u201d U.S. citizens, and the country\u2019s interests. Trump dismissed those and more recent assessments to the same effect.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a few days ago, literally no one was talking about an imminent Iran nuclear threat,\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Defense experts who spoke with The Intercept warned the United States might be entering into a new round of the Forever Wars.<\/p>\n \u201cBetween enabling Israel in Gaza and all of its operations across the Middle East, and now these strikes in Iran, we are setting the foundation for the next generation\u2019s \u2018War on Terror,\u2019\u201d said Wes Bryant, who served until earlier this year as the senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon\u2019s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.<\/p>\n He questioned the Trump administration\u2019s abrupt shift from negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program to bombing it.<\/p>\n The idea of an \u201cimminent Iran nuclear threat,\u201d wasn\u2019t serious a few days ago, Bryant said. \u201cThe fact that suddenly Trump was pulled into this reactive major strike against Iran under the auspices of nuclear deterrence is, I think, among the most disturbing red flags of this administration thus far.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cTrump\u2019s decision to strike Iranian nuclear targets is a short-sighted one that will not achieve his stated objectives, brings significant risks to the United States, and could derail his foreign policy priorities,\u201d said Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy. \u201cTo strike Iran while diplomacy was ongoing undermines his push for peace elsewhere including with Putin. Why would Russia or any other country negotiate with Trump going forward?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his military\u2019s objective was to\u00a0\u201cstrike all\u201d of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities<\/a>. He had been pressing Trump to augment Israel\u2019s attacks with weaponry his country does not possess \u2013 namely the 30,000-pound GBU-57s, known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators or \u201cbunker buster\u201d bombs, that Israel says can destroy Iran\u2019s underground nuclear enrichment facility in Fordow.<\/p>\n Former defense officials speculated that these weapons \u2014 which are so heavy they can only be carried by U.S. B-2 bombers \u2014 were used on Israel\u2019s behalf during the Saturday attacks.<\/p>\n If Iranian leaders respond to the U.S. strikes with a major counterattack, such as striking American military bases across the Middle East, it could set off an escalatory spiral and even more aggressive U.S. involvement.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is trying to signal that he wants to get back to diplomacy but the risk of a wider war is still very real and high. Iran\u2019s retaliation\u00a0will determine whether\u00a0the\u00a0United States can extract itself so easily,\u201d said Kavanagh, a former\u00a0senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation who served as the director of its Army Strategy program.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also very little chance Iran will negotiate now because Trump has no way to provide them credible\u00a0assurances that if they come to the table, they will be spared future attacks,\u201d Kavanagh said. \u201cTrump has sacrificed significant diplomatic leverage for narrow military gains of uncertain duration, and in doing so, has put the United States at risk of another costly Middle East war that will further\u00a0diminish U.S. global\u00a0influence and American prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 40,000 U.S. active-duty military personnel and civilians working for the Pentagon are deployed across the Middle East. U.S. troops in\u00a0the region have come under attack close to 400 times<\/a>, at a minimum, since October 2023 in response<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0<\/span>U.S.-supported\u00a0<\/a>Israeli war on Gaza<\/span>.\u00a0Predominantly led by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian-allied Houthi government in Yemen, the strikes include a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and ballistic missiles fired at fixed bases and U.S. warships across the region.<\/span><\/p>\n Trump struck a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in May. Prior to the U.S. attacks on Iran, the Houthis threatened to again target U.S. ships in the Red Sea if Washington joined Israel\u2019s attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Netanyahu has expressed his desires for regime change<\/a> in Iran and not ruled out targeting the country\u2019s supreme leader, saying\u00a0\u201cno one in Iran should have immunity.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s defense minister said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot \u201ccontinue to exist.\u201d<\/a> Trump joined in on the threats, pointing out that the U.S. knows Khamenei\u2019s location and dangled the possibility of assassinating him in the future. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know exactly where the so-called \u2018Supreme Leader\u2019 is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there \u2013 we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a> earlier this week, before Saturday\u2019s strikes.<\/p>\n \u201cMilitary force, by itself, is seldom effective in orchestrating regime change,\u201d Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general who headed both Special Operations Command and Central Command, which oversees U.S. military efforts in the Middle East, told The Intercept before the U.S. began its attacks on Saturday. <\/p>\n \u201cThere will be ramifications against the U.S. and this should be discussed and addressed in detail,\u201d Votel warned. \u201cThere is no clean course we can take in this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n