Aaron Boxerman, Tyler Pager,
Here’s the latest.
Sirens blared in parts of Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf that is home to the headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet. Mobile phone alerts from Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior urged citizens and residents to “remain calm and head to the nearest safe place.”
So far, few members of Congress have awoken to news of the strikes on Iran but Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Democrat and former Marine who served in Iraq, said on social media early Saturday that the United States “can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.” He added that Americans should not have to “pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people.”
While President Trump recited a litany of Iranian attacks on American interests back to the hostage crisis during the Carter administration, he made little effort to argue that any immediate threat had prompted the latest U.S. and Israeli strikes. He repeated the allegation he made in the State of the Union address that Iran was working on missiles that could soon reach the United States, but the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded, in a 2025 report, that no decision had been made by the Iranian government to pursue an intercontinental ballistic missile. While Trump repeated that Iran could never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, he did not attempt to make the case that Iran was closer to producing one.
Videos verified by The New York Times show strikes in an area of Tehran that houses the presidential palace and Iran’s National Security Council, among other important government buildings. Another video shows a strike near Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.
A central goal of the first joint wave of strikes in Iran was to hit as many leaders as possible, according to three Israeli security officials familiar with the operations.
The officials said that, similar to the previous strikes in June last year, planners took into account that they would manage to achieve at least some degree of surprise. They calculated that if they wanted to kill senior Iranian officials, they had to try and hit them in the first round of strikes. Afterward, it is highly likely that more precautions would be taken to protect the leadership.
The Department of Defense is calling these strikes “Operation Epic Fury.”
Loud booms are heard in Jerusalem, likely from interceptions of incoming missiles.
Air-raid sirens are continuing to sound in Jerusalem and across Israel, warning of incoming Iranian attacks. There have been no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Iran’s state news outlet, IRNA, said it was up and running again, after it announced it had been hacked during the U.S.-Israeli attack.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA is reporting explosions in the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, and in the western province of Ilam near the border with Iraq.
Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was not notified of the strikes in advance, his spokesman said.
One of the key questions is whether the United States and Israel can suppress Iran’s ability to strike back with its large supply of ballistic missiles and drones. Iran has promised a major response and is likely to try to use a significant number of its missiles sooner rather than later. How much damage they can cause to American forces and to Israel will likely dictate how long this war goes on.
Trump’s call for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard forces to surrender, with the promise of complete immunity, added a particularly unusual element to the speech. Because the campaign appears to be largely an air operation, there is no one for them to surrender to, no one to take them prisoner or to implement Trump’s offer of “total immunity.” It may have simply been intended to sow doubt in the ranks if they believed the government was going to collapse.
Trump’s statements effectively differentiated his war aims now from those last June. The targets back then were deeply buried nuclear facilities, most of them far from civilian populations. The sites that appear to have been hit today are at the core of Iran’s cities and its leadership compounds, and the goal as described by Trump is clearly different — to wipe out the leadership and make way for a revolution. It is a high-risk move: There are almost no successful examples in modern history of regime change through an air campaign. But administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have made clear they imagine a swift campaign with no U.S. troops on the ground.
Reporting from Washington
President Trump said early Saturday that the United States had launched a “massive and ongoing” military campaign against Iran in an effort to decimate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in government.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” he said in an eight-minute-video posted on Truth Social at 2:30 a.m. “Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced in a video statement that Israel and the United States had launched a “joint operation” against what he called the “existential threat” posed by Iran. He said the American-Israeli attack against the Iranian government could “create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.”
The constitution grants Congress alone the power to formally declare war, something that even Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought to remind Trump of this week. In his video remarks, the president indicated that he understood this operation to be a war, citing the possibility of American “casualties that often happens in war.” His declaration that “no president was willing to do what I am willing to tonight” speaks to the likely unilateral decision-making from the White House.
Just hours before the attacks began, senior officials from Arab states and European allies were saying that the White House was still not telling them what the objective of the strikes would be. President Trump left no doubt in his video that it is regime change.“When we are finished, take over your government,’’ he said. Trump went on to claim that only he, among the presidents who have confronted Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, was willing to seize the moment.
The Israeli military said it had detected ballistic missiles launched from Iran at the country — the first wave of Iranian retaliation in response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks earlier today.
Air-raid sirens are resounding throughout northern Israel and the coastal city of Haifa, warning residents to enter fortified shelters.
Iran’s state television announces that Iran’s armed forces were getting ready to retaliate against Israel.
Several residents of Tehran said there had been no direction from the government so far, and that sirens did not sound when the attacks began. They said that state radio and television outlets were not giving people guidance on where to go and what to do.
Regime change in Iran would be the fulfilment of a decades-old obsession of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He has long portrayed the Islamic Republic as a menace to Israel, the Middle East and the world.
Skeptics of U.S. military intervention expressed doubt that they would ultimately result in an Iran that abandoned its nuclear program. Edward King, the president of Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates a restrained foreign policy, said diplomacy would have been a better path.
Rosemary Kelanic, a scholar at Defense Priorities, warned that it was easier to start a war in the Middle East than to end one. “The overriding imperative now is for the U.S. to avoid escalation into a prolonged conflict that wastes American power rather than enhances it,” she said.
A Tehran resident and local journalist said landlines in the city were down and only mobile phones had sporadic reception.
The foreign minister of Oman, Badr Albusaidi, who was mediating the talks between Iran and the United States, had flown to Washington to argue that progress was being made. He said Tehran had agreed never to stockpile enriched uranium, making “the enrichment argument less relevant.” But Iran had refused to discuss other reported American demands that it give up enrichment entirely, limit the range of its ballistic missiles and end its support to its allies in the region, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
In his taped remarks, President Trump urged the Iranian people to “take over your government” once the military action is completed.
“This will be probably your only chance for generations,” he said. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond.”
The Israeli attack on Iran began at 08:10 a.m. local time, according to two Israeli senior defense officials familiar with the planning. According to the officials, the combined targets include key figures in Iran and this is an extensive attack that is expected to last at least several days.
The primary threat Israel currently sees from Iran is long-range surface-to-surface missiles. According to the plan presented to President Trump, Israel will focus most of its efforts on missile storage sites, production facilities and launchers, while U.S. forces are expected to focus on the Iranian nuclear project and additional targets related to the powerful Revolutionary Guards force and the government.
President Trump said that, as a result of the U.S. military operation, “We may have casualties.” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Trump in private high-level meetings that American troops could be killed or injured in a war with Iran.
The strikes on Iran began just past 1 a.m. on Saturday in Washington when most members of Congress were sleeping. But Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned in a statement on Friday before the attack began that “if war is unnecessary, it should be avoided.” He said Congress had “received no real briefings or intelligence” on a possible attack and that while Iran posed a “serious” and “destabilizing” threat to the United States and its allies, the administration had presented no “strategic justification for preemptive strikes.”
President Trump, in a video posted on Truth Social, said: “Our objective is to the defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”
Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Health said “ambulances have been dispatched to central areas of Tehran and hospitals are on alert,” in an interview with the state news agency, IRNA. “The possible number of injured and the exact areas are yet to be announced.”
As the country braces for Iranian retaliation, several Israeli hospitals say they are preparing to move patients to fortified shelters or underground shelters. Israel’s health ministry said it had ordered medical centers to discharge those who do not need immediate hospitalization.
The strikes on Iran come just hours after Israel targeted what it described as launch sites and underground shafts used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In recent weeks, Israel has intensified its operations against the group, including an airstrike in the Bekaa Valley last week that killed eight members, among them a commander.
President Trump confirms the U.S. military has begun “major combat operations” in Iran. He posted an eight-minute-long video on Truth Social.
This is the second time President Trump has attacked Iran during ongoing negotiations on its nuclear program. Already, Iranian officials were doubtful they could trust Trump to negotiate seriously or if he intended to reach a lasting agreement. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has an abiding mistrust of the United States, which was reinforced in 2018 when Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed harsh economic sanctions on Iran.
The websites of several Iranian news agencies are down, including the official state media outlet IRNA, which said it was hacked.
Experts have warned that an attack on Iran could potentially draw the United States into a protracted conflict, because Iran’s leadership oversees extensive military abilities and a network of regional proxy forces that could help sustain a resistance.
Ahead of the strikes, U.S. officials said they expected that Iran would retaliate swiftly against any attack, and likely launch missile strikes on American bases and embassies. Tehran’s proxy network of paramilitary forces is also expected to strike at American interests in the region. The reason for the sizable military build up was, in part, to protect American bases from any Iranian counterattack.
The attack marks the second U.S. attack on Iran in less than a year. Last June, the U.S. bombed three nuclear sites in the country, which Trump said “completely and totally obliterated” them. The strikes also come roughly two months after the U.S. launched a military operation in Venezuela to capture its leader, Nicolas Maduro.
The focus of the American strikes — at the moment — is Iran’s military apparatus, a U.S. official said. Besides its nuclear facilities, Iran is believed to have more than 2,000 missiles, primarily short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. These are scattered at launch sites across the country, U.S. military officials said.
The American strikes come after a massive U.S. military buildup in the region that has included the deployment of two aircraft carriers, a number of naval destroyers and more than 50 fighter planes.
Explosions have also been heard in other cities across Iran, according to the semiofficial news agency, Fars, which reported blasts in Qom, Kermanshah, Isfahan and Karaj.
Iran has closed its airspace, according to the semiofficial news agency Tasnim.
The Israeli military says the country will observe tightened restrictions in the wake of the Israeli attack on Iran, effective immediately, with a general closure of schools, workplaces, and public gatherings.
Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, immediately criticized the strikes. Massie is in a group of lawmakers that intend to force votes next week to prohibit President Trump from authorizing strikes without consulting with Congress, an issue that may be considered moot by many given U.S. involvement in military action today.
The strikes came after Trump grew frustrated with the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, his envoys, met with Iranian officials in Geneva on Thursday but Trump said on Friday that he was “not happy” with the talks. Trump had said Friday morning that he had not made a decision about whether to launch military action and that he would “love not to use force” but that “sometimes you have to.”
The latest U.S. military strikes on Iran came roughly eight months after American forces bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities, attacks that directly involved the United States in Israel’s 12-day war on Tehran.
Those June attacks came after President Trump — who campaigned against American interventionism and has billed himself as a peacemaker — lost patience with diplomatic efforts and shifted his position on Iran under pressure from Israel.
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