History pivoted in the small hours of Sunday.
At 03:04 a.m. Jerusalem time, US President Donald Trump announced a “very successful attack” using B-2 stealth bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles on Iran’s three most critical nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
All aircraft, he said, had “dropped a full payload of BOMBS [sic]” and were already out of Iranian airspace.
The order came after weeks of hand-wringing inside the administration. Libertarian Republicans warned of “another endless war.”
“There is no constitutional authority for the president to bomb anyone without asking permission first,” Sen. Rand Paul insisted as late as Wednesday.
Rep. Thomas Massie filed the War Powers Act, saying that Israel’s clash with Iran was “not our war.” Even some among Trump’s own National Security Council urged more time for back channel talks.
Yet the president listened instead to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who pleaded on national television: “Help Israel finish the job. If that means providing bombs, provide bombs; if it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.”
This is precisely what happened.
What the strike achieved
Preliminary imagery suggests that the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs collapsed large portions of Fordow’s mountain chambers, while cruise missiles shredded key halls at Natanz and Isfahan.
The Pentagon believes that Iran’s only line capable of enriching uranium to 60% is out of action “for years – perhaps permanently.”
Tehran claims “limited damage” and no casualties. Yet, within hours, it launched a token missile volley at Israel, largely intercepted by the Arrow and the Iron Dome, underscoring how few levers remain when your most prized assets lie in smoking ruin.
For Washington, the operation restores deterrence eroded since the 2021 Kabul airport attack incident. It tells every would-be proliferator, from North Korea to any rogue in Beirut, that the red line on fissile material is written in concrete-crushing ordnance and carried by allies acting in lockstep.
IT ALSO buries an unhealthy strain of isolationism that has crept into the Republican mainstream. Foreign adventurism should never be casual, but equating limited, high-impact strikes with Iraq-style quagmires is a false analogy.
In 1981, prime minister Menachem Begin destroyed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor. In 2007, prime minister Ehud Olmert erased Syria’s secret nuclear core. Neither mission led to an occupation. Both prevented nuclear blackmail. Trump’s decision belongs in that lineage.
The moral ledger
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not simply another hostile regime – it is steeped in Holocaust denial. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously called the Shoah a “myth,” and Tehran still hosts cartoon contests celebrating Hitler’s handiwork.
A government that rejects recorded genocide cannot be left with the tools to attempt a fresh one.
This truth is not an abstract notion for the American president. Three of his grandchildren, Arabella Rose, Joseph Frederick, and Theodore James, are Jewish.
The very way in which the IRGC brands its identity and ideology is, in itself, an affront.
With Sunday’s strike, Trump acted not only for the United States and for Israel’s approximately nine million citizens, but for three American children who call him grandpa. That is a rare, personal line through geopolitics to family, and it matters.
Expect a chorus of constitutional critiques on Capitol Hill this week. Let them come, and let them vote. An authorization of force after a successful operation would nail down bipartisan backing and deny Tehran the comfort of portraying a divided America.
Isolationists will say that the blowback is coming. Perhaps. Iran retains proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. The Islamic Republic also has cyber claws that it can flex.
But it is one thing to fire rockets at Haifa. It is quite another to replace thousands of destroyed IR-6 centrifuges buried under 80 meters of limestone while US bombers refuel in the Gulf. Hard power still shapes options.
THERE ARE three strategic tests ahead, as follows.
- Proxy containment: Washington must state clearly that any attack by Iranian auxiliaries will be answered with measures made against Iranian assets. The link between the two must be direct and public.
Verification discipline: Knowledge cannot be bombed, but hardware can be. If inspectors are expelled, the P5+1 countries should impose snap back sanctions automatically. The burden of transparency belongs to Tehran.
Alliance management: Sunday’s flight paths were possible only because Israel had already degraded Iranian air defenses. The success argues for deeper US-Israel operational planning, and for a quiet understanding with key Arab partners who privately cheered the strike while praying not to appear complicit.
A word about “forever wars”
Every president swears never to repeat the mistakes of the last intervention, and every rogue state counts on that fatigue.
The lesson of Iraq is not that force never works; it is that force without a defined, limited objective invites disaster.
Here, the objective was clear: Smash Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, withdraw, and tell Iran that the next move is theirs. The mission ended the moment the bomb bay doors closed.
So thank you, Mr. President, for overriding the voices of caution when caution meant paralysis; for acting before Iran crossed the weapons-grade threshold; for proving that alliances count when heavy lifting is required; and for reminding a restless West that deterrence sometimes demands velocity, not verbal condemnation.
Historians will argue over the downstream effects. For now, one fact is plain: The most advanced nuclear program ever fielded by an openly genocidal regime lies in ruins, and the free world, not just Israel, will sleep a little easier tonight. That alone would have been enough.