Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. A short time ago, the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime.
On Saturday night, the United States conducted airstrikes on three of Iran's nuclear sites. It was a dramatic escalation of the US's involvement in Israel's deepening war with Tehran.
Our objective was the destruction of irans nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror.
President Trump addressed the nation at ten pm Eastern and called the attacks on Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities quote a spectacular military.
Success rand The bully of the Middle East must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsath said in a press conference from the Pentagon that an initial battleground assessment suggested that the strikes had quote the desired effect.
We devastated the Iranian nuclear program, but it's worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops of the Iranian people.
Within hours of the attack, Israel's prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out a recorded statement praising the US strikes. Iran's foreign minister said the country would use all options to defend itself. Bloomberg's US National security and intelligence reporter Natalia Drosdiak says that Trump's monumental decision happened slowly and then suddenly all at once.
He had publicly said that he would give himself two weeks to decide, and over the weekend we started seeing some signs that maybe something was up sooner than that, and it appears that he decided pretty much minutes before the bomber plant's actually deployed to Iran. So this was a relatively last minute decision, even if it was something that he'd been considering for the last few days.
And now it's raised questions that could take much longer to resolve.
So the fear was that getting involved here, even if it was a limited surgical strike, that could escalate and spiral out of control in such a way that would just drag the US back into another longer fight.
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today. On the show What Comes After the US strikes on Iran? Natalia drosdiac covered is national security and intelligence for Bloomberg and has been following the US's weekend strike on Iran.
So this whole operation took about thirty seven hours. They dubbed it Midnight Hammer. It resulted in strikes on Iran's nuclear sites in fordeaux Is, Fahan, and Natan's. In the end, they ended up using about one hundred and twenty five planes. They even launched Tomahawk missiles from submarines, you know, some hundred miles away, if not more, And they ended up using about fourteen of those bunker buster bombs, which are
called massive ordnance penetrator bombs. So by the end of it, because there were no US service members who.
Were lost or harmed.
And Iran also didn't end up firing at any US assets, the administration deemed it a big success.
Well, the move was surprising for a president who campaigned on America First, who promised to end the US's involvement in forever Wars. How much of a reversal is this from Trump?
So, I mean, on one hand, he has been saying repeatedly for years now that Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, But on the other hand as you say he's been. He had campaigned on becoming, you know, the peace president and getting America out of wars that were in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. There's also a strong faction inside his party that tend to be more restrainers, that don't want to get engaged in these forever wars.
But the question is whether they'll ultimately rally around him, and you know, they might be able to come around to that narrative, especially if these strikes stay limited and don't escalate in a major way.
The US strikes came nine days after Israel bombed Iran on June thirteenth, setting off a series of attacks between the two countries. Ethan Bronner is Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief, and he's been covering the fallout. I asked him what we know so far about the love of coordination between Israel and the US and a lead up to the US as strikes.
It was exceptionally tight coordination.
Trump got a call from Natanya who said we are going to move and he didn't stop them.
He didn't say don't do it, but he said you're on your own. But then what.
Happened is the Israelis, after many years and months of planning, actually carried out a rather brilliant set of tactical moves in terms of killing a number of top people, in terms of damaging Natons and other uranium and Richmond site, and in terms of taking out a whole bunch of launchers and long range ballistic missiles. So when that happened, I think that the Americans looked on and said, well, this could be something we could join easily, and the
Israeli said it to them. They said, hey, we've set the table, no boots.
On the ground.
All you have to do is bring your amazing hardware, your B two's and your bunker busters, draw a few bombs and get out.
That's all we're asking of you. And in essence, that's what happened.
So, I mean, what does the US's entrance into this world, the response to that call and that ask say about Nyaho's relationship with Trump and his influence over the president.
So we do know that he has been very influential over the years, and in fact, Nichan Yaou did tell the Nation Israel a week ago that he ordered the beginning the preparation for this attack on Iran in November.
So it's clear that the election of Trump was one of the motives for him to do so.
President Biden was against this kind of military activity, so was President Obama, and so in previous efforts to maybe bomb Iran, the Americans pushed back and did not allow Israel to do so this time. Interestingly, in the spring, it looked like President Trump did say to them hold off when they wanted to move forward.
He wanted to give diplomacy a chance.
But he also says that diplomacy didn't work, and therefore he decided to move in this direction.
Beyond destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities, Israel has also called for regime change in Iran. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Hegsuth said that wasn't part of the US's goals, but later, in a post on True Social Trump implied that he did favor regime change too. As he put it, make Iran great again. What do we know about the differences in what the US and Israel hope to accomplish here?
So officially, Israel has not named regime change as one of its war aims.
It has frequently said, we'd be delighted. We think it's a great thing.
Ultimately, that's what has to happen, but that they have not called for that. They have set out three war aims to destroy Around's nuclear capacity, two to destroy its ballistic missile capacity, and three to destroy its ability to
sponsor militias around Israel that seek its destruction. There has been a kind of emission creep in Israel about this, and one of the reasons, of course, is that over the last nine days since Israel launched its attack on Iran, the ballistic missiles that have flown into this country have been extremely destructive and very frightening. They have left people homeless, they have destroyed whole city blocks, and they have made the Israelis feel that simply ending the nuclear program may not.
End the threat that Iran poses to this country.
So what do we know about the actual extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities and its capabilities.
So far, we don't know much, Sarah. We are waiting, and the even the.
Israeli officials that I've spoken to, so they're waiting for deeper data and knowledge and information of what happened.
The goal of the US operation.
Was to drop such heavy, heavy bombs on fourdoh that it would not be able to be reconstituted.
We don't know if that happened.
We do know that if fourteen thirty thousand pound bombs were dropped.
As apparently as the case on.
A spot, even if it's eighty meters or one hundred meters underground, it feels like a reasonable assumption that bad things would happen to that place.
As of Sunday evening, the extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities was still being assessed. So I asked Bloomberg's Natalia Drosiak what the Trump administration was preparing for next.
So at this point, it's pretty clear that Iran is going to have to retaliate against the US. You know, this has been the Supreme Leader's main project for decades, this nuclear project. So the strikes that we've seen over the last few days are not going to go over lately. And there's a variety of ways that they may choose to retaliate. It could be attacking US forces in the Middle East or American citizens. It could involve getting proxy
groups involved launching terror attacks around the world. There's any number of ways that they may choose to retaliate, and in terms of how the US will respond, they've made clear that if Iran responds or retaliates in any way, the US will hit back even harder. And in the meantime, the White House is also, you know, continuing to push
for diplomacy. They're hoping that, you know, with Iran's program now so decimated, as they say, as they claim anyway, they're hoping that they'll feel compelled to finally come to the table in a serious way and reach a deal.
Well, the US and Iran, we're engaging in negotiations and talks before this attack. What could diplomacy look like moving forward?
It's really difficult to say, because I think at this stage there's probably a lot of trust that's been broken. So will the Iranians believe the Americans? I think that's one of the key questions. Another one is how do you actually monitor the Iranian nuclear program if they're allowed to have any any sort of enrichment, even if it's
just for civilian purposes. You know, that was one of the benefits, let's say, or what proponents were advocating for as part of the past nuclear program, and now with these sites destroyed, that monitoring is going to be very difficult.
Is there a scenario where this weekend's attacks are the end of US involvement in this conflict? Like, could this go back to being Israel's war tomorrow next week?
I think this is the key question. I think what we'll decide that is how Iran retaliates. If they retaliate in a way that's unsuccessful in terms of targeting American forces or American citizens, then there might be a way to keep this from spiraling.
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. For more reporting on the Israel Iran war from on the ground in the Middle East and from the White House, go to Bloomberg dot Com and tomorrow on the Big Take, we'll bring you an episode diving into what this latest escalation could mean for oil markets and access to Iron Strait of Hormuz. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe
today at Bloomberg dot com Slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.