UNITED States (US) President Donald Trump said Saturday, June 21, 2025, that the US has completed attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran, including “Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan.”
“All planes are now outside of Iran airspace. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” he said on the social platform Truth Social.
Tehran must agree to “end this war,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the strikes.
Iran’s state-run Irna news agency acknowledged attacks on the country’s nuclear facilities.
An Iranian state television commentator said that “you started it and we will end it,” according to a CNN report.
Trump isn’t planning additional US strikes on Iran and wants to “propel Tehran back to negotiations,” said CNN.
CBS News said that the United States reached out to Iran diplomatically Saturday to say the strikes are all the US plans and that regime change efforts are not planned.
Escalation
Trump’s decision to intervene directly in support of Israel’s attempt to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program marks a historic escalation in the Middle East, local media said.
The intervention may provoke retaliation from Tehran against US troops and military installations across the region, local media reported.
The US air raids on Iran came on the ninth day after Israel launched attacks on Iran on June 13.
Trump announced on Thursday that he would make a decision “in the next two weeks” to give Iran a final chance to negotiate.
“No danger”
There were “no signs of contamination” at the nuclear sites at Esfahan, Fordo and Natanz after US airstrikes, the Iranian state media reported, quoting a statement from the country’s National Nuclear Safety System Center.
“There is no danger to the residents living around the aforementioned sites,” the statement said.
Iran had evacuated these three nuclear sites “a while ago,” said Hassan Abedini, deputy political director of Iran’s state broadcaster, adding that Iran “didn’t suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out.”
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization confirmed the US attacks, but said its work will not be stopped.
“The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran assures the great Iranian nation that despite the evil conspiracies of its enemies, with the efforts of thousands of its revolutionary and motivated scientists and experts, it will not allow the development of this national industry, which is the result of the blood of nuclear martyrs, to be stopped,” the agency said in a statement issued after Trump announced the US attacks.
In its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, the United States used the GBU-57A/B massive ordnance penetrator bomb, known as the “bunker buster,” local media quoted two sources familiar with the operation.
B-2 bombers are the only aircraft capable of carrying the bombs, said the report.
Trump and his team were in touch with top congressional Republicans before the strikes, but did not brief top Democrats on his plans until after the bombs had been dropped, the report added.
Houthi’s warning
A senior official from Yemen’s Houthi group said in a social media post early Sunday, June 22, that it would hold Trump responsible for the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.
“Trump must bear the consequences,” Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad posted on X.
Prior to the US attacks, the Houthi group had said in a statement that it would target US ships if Washington attacks Iran.
“If America is involved in the attack and aggression against Iran ... the armed forces (Houthi forces) will target its ships and battleships in the Red Sea,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in the statement, aired by Houthi-run al-Masirah TV.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump on Sunday after the US attacks, calling it a “bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
Trump had created a “pivot of history,” he added.
The US air raids on Iran came on the ninth day after Israel launched attacks on Iran on June 13. / XINHUA