The United States military bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran on Saturday, President Trump announced while also calling for peace—first in a social media post reposted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and then in a televised speech from the White House.
The goal of the strikes in Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan was to destroy “Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity” and eliminate “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” said Trump, standing at a podium in the White House with a somber Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio behind him. “The strikes were a spectacular military success.”
Now, Trump threatened, Iran must “make peace” or face “tragedy…far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”
The president who described himself as a peacemaker in his inaugural address noted that there are “many targets left” in Iran, and “if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill.”
Lawmakers quickly criticized the strikes as well as the lack of communication between the White House and Congress about them.
“This was a massive gamble by President Trump, and nobody knows yet whether it will pay off,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “There is a lot we still don’t know, and we need an accurate, factual damage assessment.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the United States “must not rush into war with Iran,” and pointed out that Trump “has not continued the bipartisan tradition of regularly briefing Congress on major national security events that impact Americans around the world.”
Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, said the act of striking Iran without a declaration of war was unconstitutional.
“As our nation learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is easier to start a war in the Middle East than to end one.”
But not all members of Congress disagreed with the choice to strike. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Trump’s decision “deliberate and correct.”
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