President Donald Trump announced early Saturday morning the U.S. military and Israel began joint “major combat operations” in Iran with the objective of “eliminating imminent threats” from the regime.
The following day the Pentagon reported Iran’s supreme leader had been killed.
“They [Iran] rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump said in a video he posted to Truth Social. “Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.”
Trump continued, “Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message. For these reasons, the United States military has undertaken a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
Operation Epic Fury, as it has been coined, involved B-2 stealth bombers striking Iran’s ballistic missile facilities, according to the U.S. Central Command on X Sunday. The strikes also killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump said in a different Truth Social post.
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi posted on X over the weekend saying that a “deal was within reach. We left Geneva with understanding that we’d seal a deal next time we meet. Those who wanted to spoil diplomacy succeeded in their mission. But it was Mr. Trump, yet again, who ultimately ordered bombing of the negotiating table.”
In another post on X, Araghchi said, “Netanyahu and Trump’s war on Iran is wholly unprovoked, illegal, and illegitimate. Trump has turned ‘America First’ into ‘Israel First’—which always means ‘America Last’.”