America used decoys, bunker-busters to attack nuclear sites
Hegseth said members of Congress were only notified after the planes were out of danger, contradicting earlier reports that Trump had informed Republican congressional leadership beforehand.
The flights amounted to the second-longest flights in the B-2’s operational history, according to Hegseth and Air Force General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The longest was a 40-hour round trip in October 2001 in the initial phase of the Afghanistan war.
“This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called,” Hegseth said. “It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.”
The officials said 75 precision-guided weapons were used and the operation involved 125 aircraft. Caine said the battle damage would take time to assess but “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
Prior to the B-2 strikes on Fordow, a submarine with the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group in the Arabian Sea fired 24 Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to Caine and a graphic released by the Pentagon.
Addressing the nation late Saturday, Trump claimed Iran’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
Caine was more cautious in his assessment: “Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” he said.
Joseph Votel, a former commander of the US Central Command and now a fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the US planes could yet return to Iran to ensure the job was finished.
“It would not be a surprise to me if, after an assessment period, we went back in and re-struck some of these targets to make sure that we achieved the effect,” he said.
“That actually is a normal part of our military targeting process, is to strike, assess, and then if necessary, strike again to achieve the results that we’re looking for.”
Hegseth said the mission was focused on destroying Iran’s nuclear program and not regime change in Tehran. He also said the mission had not been “open-ended”.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear that Iran needed to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions altogether.
“At the end of the day, if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power, I do think it puts the regime at risk,” Rubio said Sunday on Fox News.
