US bombs Iran nuclear sites and Tehran warns of ‘everlasting consequences’ | BBC News
united States has carried out massive precision strikes on three key nuclear facilities in Iran obliterating them in his words we’ve seen a number of explosions over Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few hours after Iran launched a missile attack israel says a number of areas were hit in the north and center of the country with at least 16 casualties reported well Israel says a number of areas were hit in the north and center of the country uh with uh those casualties reported and uh 30 missiles in total were um were managed to breach the Israeli defense shield sirens sounded in several regions as Israel’s defensive systems operated to intercept the threat these pictures show some of the damage from Iranian attacks well we’ll be hearing more on that in just a moment or two but first let’s take a listen once again to President Trump during an address at the White House he said future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier if Iran does not make peace a short time ago the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for Natants and Esfahan everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated iran the bully of the Middle East must now make peace 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.” They have been killing our people blowing off their arms blowing off their legs with roadside bombs that was their specialty we lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular so many were killed by their general Casm Solommani i decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen it will not continue i want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister BB Netanyahu we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel i want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and most importantly I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity i hope that’s so i also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Raisen Kaine spectacular general and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack with all of that being said this cannot continue there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days remember there are many targets left tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal but if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision speed and skill most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes there’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight not even close there has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago tomorrow General Kaine Secretary of Defense Pete Hexath will have a press conference at 8 a.m at the Pentagon and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them god bless the Middle East god bless Israel and God bless America thank you very much thank you well as you heard there President Trump said that three key sites were hit in Iran let’s take a closer look at them they were at Foraux Natans and Isvahan president Trump said that Iran’s facilities had been in his words completely obliterated well Isvahan is a uranium conversion plant whilst Natans is an enrichment plant and even before the US strikes the International Atomic Energy Agency that’s the UN Nuclear Watchdog said that Natans had sustained severe damage but the main site hit this morning was Ford the uranium enrichment site is situated about 60 miles that’s about 100 km south of the Iranian capital Tehran it is located in a mountainous region it’s thought to consist of two main tunnels that house centrifuges used to enrich uranium as well as a network of smaller tunnels reaching this underground installation which is at least 60 m below ground required more powerful bunker busting bombs which only the US has its official name is the GBU57 massive Ordinance Penetrator and the only planes that could carry such bombs are B2 stealth bombers which were indeed involved today senior Department of Defense officials confirmed that the bomb was used in the attacks with two being deployed for each of the three nuclear targets well Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke after the strikes praising President Trump for the decision and for the US support for Israel congratulations President Trump your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history in Operation Rising Lion Israel has done truly amazing things but in tonight’s action against Iran’s nuclear facilities America has been truly unsurpassed it has done what no other country on Earth could do history will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons his leadership today has created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace president Trump and I often say peace through strength first comes strength then comes peace and tonight President Trump and the United States acted with a lot of strength president Trump I thank you the people of Israel thank you the forces of civilization thank you god bless America god bless Israel and may God bless our unshakable alliance our unbreakable faith a delighted Benjamin Netanyahu there but uh even despite the American bombing this morning the war absolutely goes on a little earlier Israel confirmed that 30 Iranian missiles were fired towards Israel we heard the sirens here we heard the uh the alert we went down to our bunker very quickly um for some 40 minutes um and you can see here the live pictures in Hifer in northern Israel that’s uh pretty close to the Lebanese border that was one of the areas that saw direct hits of those Iranian missiles the Israelis are now saying that there were 10 direct impacts of the Iranian missiles that got through and at least 16 people are injured um it is reported that uh one of these sirens failed in Hifur to warn of an interceptor uh going up and so uh that could potentially have explained some of the injuries up there here in Tel Aviv as well uh there were there were missiles which we heard around our hotel our hotel shook uh a little bit and we heard the whistle of the interceptions uh this is the skyline now live here in Tel Aviv uh as Israelis wake up and try to comprehend the scale of what is happening let us turn now to treat Pari who is executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft a think tank that advocates for a US foreign policy centered US foreign policy centered on diplomacy and military restraint treaty I would have I would venture that uh diplomacy and military restraint is quite the opposite of what we have seen this morning certainly this was an illegal attack a violation of article 56 of the additional protocol to the Geneva Convention and done in a manner that really makes a mockery of diplomacy because it was still an opportunity to be able to strike a deal that would be far more effective than this we still don’t know exactly what damage has been done but it does appear extremely unlikely that the Iranian mil uh the Iranian nuclear program has truly been eliminated and that results most likely that there will be continued bombing uh and not this kind of a oneandone that uh Trump seems to have envisioned and yet diplomacy only really works when both sides are willing to sit down and talk and what we’ve had from Iran over the last few days has been not only a complete push back um not not only saying that they’re willing unwilling to negotiate under bombardment but saying that um eur Europe’s proposals were completely unworkable refusing to roll back enrichment to 0% so do you actually believe that there was any chance of getting the Iranians to engage in meaningful de in meaningful diplomacy certainly uh I mean I would remind your viewers that of course the United Kingdom kept on saying thatI that Ukraine should not have to negotiate while it was being bombarded so it seems to be the very same logic that the Iranians have applied here i nevertheless think that it was a mistake of them not that they didn’t talk to the Europeans because I don’t think they’re that relevant in this equation any longer but rather that they refused to engage directly with the United States i think it would have been much better if they had done so but when it comes to the requirement of zero enrichment which incidentally the Europeans abandoned more than 15 years ago and were trying to convince the United States to drop as well because they recognized correctly that as long as that was the negotiating position or the red line of the West there would never be a deal and the only time we’ve had a deal is when the West actually accepted that there would be restricted enrichment taking place in Iran under strict uh inspections rather than pushing for zero when Trump started this negotiation he had not adopted the zebra enrichment position that’s the Israeli red line his red line was no weaponization that’s part of the reason why the negotiations actually were successful at first halfway through he shifted the goalpost and adopted the Israeli red line of zero enrichment and it’s since then that we have seen this trajectory towards military confrontation which was highly predictable tita we’ve just had a comment from Rafael Graci head of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency uh which uh who who has said that there will be an emergency meeting of the agency on Monday uh what is your fear now in terms of how Iran might try to utilize what remains of its nuclear knowhow because of course facilities can be destroyed knowhow can’t and whether they will actually try to rush to weaponize if they were not already doing so well there’s no evidence that they were doing so i think it’s important to remind the viewers of that and the IA has testified to that i do fear however that that is a very likely outcome that this is the natural reaction that they would have as almost any other country would have uh to this type of an attack um and uh of course there’s other things that they may do in the in the medium which is for instance walking out of the NPT altogether uh which would mean that the IIA would no longer have any access to what is happening inside of Iban’s nuclear program because they would be kicking out all of the inspectors all of these things were predictable and part of the reason why the IEA as well as um uh nuclear experts and non-polar aation experts throughout have warned about this only looking as a success in the short term but in the long term actually being a failure this is exactly what happened when the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor or Sirak in 1981 uh at at first it looked as a great success but later on we learned that as a result of this Saddam Hussein quadrupled his nuclear budget and had he not invaded uh Kuwait in August 1991 had he only waited 6 months or so he would have actually had a nuclear weapon and the world had no idea what was going on in the Iraqi nuclear program at the time and yet critics of Iran would say well look uh enrichment at 60% which is where Iran was at in enriching about 400 kg of uranium to 60% there is no other need for that there is there is no need in in terms of of energy in terms of medical use uh for enrichment at that level apart from trying to make a nuclear warhead and get that coupled with the extremely secret secretive behavior of the Iranian regime with regards to nuclear weapons inspections over the years means that you know Iran has has has maybe maybe not brought today on itself but I mean there is there was absolutely no trust remaining between Western governments and certainly the Israeli government and Iran well the Israeli government is not part of these arrangements because it is a nuclear weapon state that is not part of the NPT so that’s not really a factor here it is absolutely true that there is no civilian use of 60% enriched uranium and that that this was very clear that this was part of what the Iranians viewed as their leverage that they would negotiate away already in the very beginning of these negotiations that Trump conducted the Iranians agreed to go down to 3.67% which then negates almost everything else that was part of the premise of your question because that was part of the negotiation to get rid of that and that option still existed the United States and Israel chose to start war instead of actually fulfilling these negotiations treat Pari executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible State Craft thank you very much indeed for speaking to us here on BBC News well let’s turn to our chief North America correspondent Gary O’ Donahghue who is live with us from Washington garrett still early where you are of course but I’m sure it’s been a fairly sleepless night uh for all of you just has as it as it has been for us um just uh give us your sense of uh the enormity of what we are seeing here that an American president who campaigned on America first and ending the the the eternal wars has now actually done what was the unthinkable and attacked Iran yeah and I think um there is some surprise here that this has come around so quickly particularly Mark after that two week deadline that the president issued on Thursday through his press secretary um we we know that after that of course there was some meetings in Europe with the Iranians uh and yesterday the Iranian foreign minister speaking as well so it’s possible that those public statements along with what the Americans were hearing through the back channels made them make up their mind pretty quickly that Iran wasn’t going to that backed itself into a position in the same way as in some ways Donald Trump has backed himself into a position uh setting these deadlines so that’s all that’s all kind of in the mix at the moment there is some criticism coming from Democrats in Congress as you can imagine i think the question will be to what extent this split in Donald Trump’s base over attacking Iran and getting involved in a in another foreign war as it’s put uh how much that will fracture further as a result of this one thing I think is worth bearing in mind um Donald Trump you know the other day said really that you know ground troops putting boots on the ground was somewhere you really didn’t want to go ever and I I wonder whether he’s starting to think that perhaps perhaps using these bombers at ten tens of thousands of feet using these missiles fired from submarines miles and miles away is a sort of step short of really breaking his promise or getting involved in that sense i I think that may be a pretty optimistic view because certainly where you are uh there’s clearly no doubt that America is now a competent in this conflict gary given that this is very much a unilateral American move alongside Israel i.e not in cooperation with America’s Western partners um can we read anything into the fact that the B2 bombers were deployed to Guam to the overseas US overseas territory and which is very far away from Iran and not for example to Diego Garcia uh the base in the Indian Ocean that Britain still effectively runs and allows uh America to operate from uh can we read anything into that in terms of the Americans trying to avoid a kind of a a a diplomatic collision with the Brits about this i think that’s possible although what I would say is that Donald Trump is unlike previous US presidents he doesn’t feel he needs that kind of cover from his allies uh if he’s going to do something he doesn’t mind doing it alone much of his foreign policy is about America first uh and some people say America alone so uh I’m not entirely sure i mean clearly that would have put the British government in a in a pretty difficult position and maybe it didn’t want to do that david Lammy the foreign secretary was here last week and he went off to Geneva to deliver a pretty tough message to the Iranians after having met with the National Security Council people here in Washington america has these various options militarily uh flying these B2s and of course they can refuel in the air they can you know be refueled in the air so they are they can they can span the globe quite frankly uh independently so that may well have been a factor we we’ll we’ll learn I think in the coming days and Mark we’re expecting in about probably about 3 or four hours from now uh a briefing from the Pentagon uh the Pentagon doesn’t do briefings anymore basically but the um the defense secretary the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs are going to stand up at 8:00 local time and and they will be asked a lot of questions by journalists in that room and I’m sure that will be among them and also you know what what kind you know with what confidence can they can they at this stage say what they’ve achieved because obviously this was done at nighttime uh they’ve got to wait for the satellite imagery to come in they have other means as well of trying to bottom out what they’ve actually achieved but the president you know described it as a sort of total success within minutes of it happening and I think the you know people will feel that the jury is a little bit out uh on that right now until there’s some more concrete evidence
The United States has bombed three major nuclear sites in Iran, bring the country directly into the Israel-Iran conflict.
President Donald Trump says the strikes “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, and told Tehran to “make peace” or face “far greater” attacks in future.
In response Iran’s foreign minister warned of “everlasting consequences” to the “outrageous” strikes.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog says no increase in radiation levels has been detected.
The UK was not involved in the US strikes but was told about them in advance, the BBC understands.
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