The US and Israel were attacking Iran on Saturday morning, with Iranian media reporting explosions in the capital Tehran.
President Donald Trump said the US military has begun “major combat operations in Iran,” in an eight-minute video message shared on Truth Social.
“Our goal is to protect the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian government,” he said.
A spokesman for Israel’s defense ministry earlier said Israel “launched the first strike against Iran to eliminate threats against the Government of Israel.”
Retaliation is expected, the spokesman said.
“As a result, missile and UAV attacks against the State of Israel and its citizens are expected immediately,” an Israeli spokesman said.
The strikes on Iran are significant, and they are not small strikes, two US officials told NBC News.
Iran’s airspace was closed early Saturday, Iran’s Tasnim news agency said, as smoke was seen rising over buildings in Tehran.
The strikes come as Trump oversees a major military build-up in the Middle East while holding talks with Tehran aimed at agreeing a new deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
“It has always been the policy of the United States, especially my administration, that this terrorist regime will never have a nuclear weapon. I will say it again, they will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in his video on Saturday.
Iran vowed before the strikes that it would retaliate against any attack, threatening to target Israel and US bases across the region.
Some Middle Eastern countries have warned any attack could escalate into another major conflict in the region still wracked by the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Trump raised the prospect of another attack on Iran after authorities responded to mass protests across the country, which erupted in December and January over the country’s faltering economy but eventually called for the overthrow of the clerical regime.
Trump wrote in Truth Social: “KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE YOUR CENTERS!!! Keep the names of murderers and torturers.” He then added: “HELP IS THE WAY.”
The regime eventually crushed the protests, killing thousands and arresting tens of thousands more in the following weeks.
Trump then threatened to attack the military if a deal was not reached with Tehran over its nuclear program – which the president said the US was “ruining” with strikes in June. A recent US test found that these destroy one out of three of their targets.
Recently, the administration said that Iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program, that it could have enough material for an atomic bomb within “a week” and that its ballistic missiles would “soon” be able to hit the US.
There is no publicly available evidence that Iran has made much progress in reviving its crippled nuclear program, including whether it has resumed enriching its precious uranium. The Trump administration has never accused Iran of resuming uranium enrichment.
Iran, which has always insisted it has not pursued nuclear weapons, has resisted demands that it halt uranium enrichment or expand talks to include its missile program and support for coalition forces across the Middle East.
At the same time as it held talks with Iran, the US gathered forces and built up its air defenses at bases across the region.
Trump sent the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to join another leading what he called an “armada.”
Iran has already signed a nuclear deal with the US and other world powers. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was seen by supporters as a landmark agreement that provided clarity and certainty to the world that Tehran was not developing nuclear weapons.
Trump and other critics saw the deal as weak, however, and said it would delay Iran from getting a bomb. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the agreement.
