US President Donald Trump said American warplanes bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel.
“Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal,” the president said in a brief televised address to the American people.
“But if peace doesn’t come quickly we will go to those other targets with precision, speed and skill.”
One of the targets was Fordo, a uranium enrichment plant hidden in a remote mountainside that is vital to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We do not yet know the full scale of the damage at the facility.
Israeli officials say they were in “full co-ordination” with the US in planning these strikes.
The US contacted Iran through diplomatic channels on Saturday to say the air strikes were all it intended to do and that “regime change efforts” were “not planned”, according to US officials speaking to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
Iran could respond by targeting US military assets in the region. Its officials had earlier warned that any US attack risked a regional war and they would retaliate.
Here is a breakdown of what we know so far.
How did this start?
Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of Iranian nuclear and military targets on 13 June. It said its ambition was to dismantle its nuclear programme, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would soon be able to produce a nuclear bomb.
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