Donald Trump announced on Saturday the US had successfully completed strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, and claimed that key enrichment facilities there had been “totally and completely obliterated”. The sites struck were Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
Iranian officials said there was no danger to the residents living near the nuclear facilities hit by US strikes, according to Iranian state media. Quoting the Crisis Management Headquarters in the province of Qom, where the Fordow facility is located, the IRNA news service said “there is no danger to the people of Qom and the surrounding area”. Al Jazeera reported earlier that another official said Fordow has “long been evacuated and has not suffered any irreversible damage”. Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority has said no radioactive effects have been detected in Gulf states.
Trump said Iran must now make peace, adding: “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. For 40 years, Iran has been saying death to America, death to Israel.” He said there were “many targets left” in the country for the US to hit. He later warned that any retaliation by Tehran against the US would be met with “force far greater than what was witnessed tonight”.
He praised Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying they “worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before”, and gone a long way towards “erasing this horrible threat to Israel”.
Netanyahu praised the attack, saying that the “awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history”. The Israeli prime minister said in a video address, the US “has done what no other country on Earth could do”.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday branded the US strikes on Iran as a “dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security.” He added: “There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control - with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world.”
The Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation called the US attack “a barbaric act that violated international law, especially the nuclear non-proliferation treaty”.
The decision to directly involve the US comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country’s air defences and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. Iran has retaliated with strikes against Israel.Israel launched the attacks on Iran saying that it wanted to remove any chance of Tehran developing nuclear weapons. Iran has argued that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had warned earlier on Saturday of a “more devastating” retaliation should Israel’s nine-day bombing campaign continue, saying the Islamic republic would not halt its nuclear program “under any circumstances.”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday that US strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will “result in irreparable damage for them”.
