‘Either there will be peace, or there will be a much greater tragedy for Iran,’ threatens Donald Trump

9:17 President Donald Trump has announced that the United States carried out a “very successful strike” on three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday night, June 21, marking the country’s official entry into the conflict initiated by Israel on June 13. Iranian officials confirmed the attack.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been taken to a safe location to avoid Israeli or American covert operations that could kill him and has already named successors.

It is not yet known what Iran's response will actually be, but speculation is that it will involve attacks on US bases in the region or even the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil production flows."We have many options," said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Accusation of treason

At a news conference in Tehran, Araghchi said that with the latest attack, Trump had “betrayed Iran,” with which he was engaged in nuclear negotiations, and “deceived his own voters,” after campaigning on a promise to end America’s forever wars.

Araghchi reiterated that Iran reserves all options to defend its security interests and its people. When asked whether the door for diplomacy is still open, he said that “this is not the case at the moment.”

“My country is under attack, under aggression, and we have to respond based on our legitimate right to self-defense,” he told the press conference.

The American attack

The bombing of nuclear plants with B-2 planes and so-called “bunker buster” bombs, capable of penetrating the underground facilities of Fordow and Natanz, occurred early last night (Brasília time) after Trump said on Thursday that he would give diplomacy a chance.

“We have completed our highly successful strike on Iran’s three nuclear facilities, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. A full load of bombs was dropped on the main facility, Fordow,” he wrote on his social media account, Truth Social.

Just over two hours later, in a brief speech on Saturday night, Trump defended the bombings : “Either there will be peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran,” he said.

The three sites mentioned by Trump include Iran's two main uranium enrichment centers — the underground Fordow facility and the larger enrichment plant at Natanz, which Israel attacked a few days ago with smaller weapons.

The third site, near the ancient city of Isfahan, is where Iran is believed to store its enriched uranium near bomb grade, which inspectors saw just two weeks ago. If these sites were destroyed, Iran’s program would be set back by years, unless parallel facilities have not already been detected.

Israel had expected Trump to enter the conflict and attack Iranian nuclear facilities. On Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video on social media site X thanking the US president: “Trump acted to bring down the most dangerous country and its most dangerous weapons,” he wrote.

the attack “contradicts international laws” and that the development of the industry “will not be interrupted” .

While the attacks on Fordow and Natanz were expected, Isfahan was actually the more complex and less discussed target. Local laboratories were working on converting uranium into the form needed for a weapon. And most of the near-bomb-grade fuel, enriched to 60 percent, was in special barrels deep inside one of the many laboratories and storage sites.

Their locations were known to international inspectors at least until a few weeks ago. It was not clear whether Iran had transported those supplies, as some Iranian officials have suggested in recent days.

One reason the U.S. may have struck multiple locations on Saturday is that its intelligence agencies estimated that the Israeli strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by about six months. The assessments also concluded that further Israeli strikes would be unlikely to cause more damage.

Earlier, it was reported that US Air Force B-2 bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading to the Pacific with 13.6-ton “bunker buster” bombs — designed to destroy bunkers.

Trump's decision

Trump has been under immense pressure from some of his most anti-interventionist supporters not to engage in the strikes. But in the past two days, some of those supporters have shifted their public arguments to demand that any action be a restrained, rather than prolonged, U.S. engagement.

He was propelled to victory in part by skeptical interventionists who applauded him for condemning the war in Iraq. But he also repeatedly said it was unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And now he has taken steps that the neoconservatives in his party, whom he so mocked, have dreamed of for decades.

Experts say President Trump’s decision to strike Iran marked the beginning of an unpredictable chapter in Middle East security and politics. “This is a new, potentially problematic phase,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Iranian political leaders will likely face domestic pressure to respond, possibly by launching counterattacks against U.S. military installations or their allies. “They have been very humiliated in every possible way, and that makes them vulnerable to their population and to internal criticism,” Takeyh said. “They would have to essentially restore their pride somehow.”

On Friday, 20, Trump had declared that Iran had a “maximum” two weeks to avoid possible air strikes from the United States, suggesting that he could make a decision before the deadline he set on Thursday (when he announced the 14 days).

In addition, Trump ruled out the possibility of success in the talks between European countries and Iran on resolving the conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic, which began this Friday in Geneva, Switzerland.

Yoav Gallant, Israel's former defense minister, said in a social media post that President Trump made a"bold decision for the United States, for Israel and for all humanity."

Gallant, who was fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November after the two fell out over Israel's war against Hamas, has expressed continued support for Netanyahu's efforts against Iran. Gallant has repeatedly called for the United States to become more directly involved in the war.

What happens now?

Experts say that depends on the extent of the U.S. strikes on Iran. If Iranian leaders perceived the attacks as limited to nuclear facilities, they might be more restrained in their response. But if the strikes were seen as comprehensive, Iranian leaders could face pressure to retaliate in a full-scale manner, such as by striking U.S. bases.