Sam Cooper

Some analysts say the U.S. strike marks the West’s first major blow in an emerging global war against the ‘CRINK’ alliance — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

At 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, President Donald Trump confirmed that U.S. B-2 stealth bombers had penetrated Iranian airspace overnight and delivered precision strikes on multiple nuclear enrichment facilities—marking the first direct American military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program since the conflict with Israel escalated.

Trump said the strikes were “massive” and necessary to prevent the world’s most dangerous regime from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

The United States and its military had completed a strike unprecedented in history and that no other military can achieve, Trump declared in a televised address from the Oval Office, arguing that Iran had sought the destruction of Israel and America, and killed many U.S. soldiers.

The president’s remarks confirmed what international observers and Israeli defense officials had begun to piece together in the early hours of Saturday in the Middle East: that American forces had joined Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign to dismantle the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and military infrastructure—a move with historic ramifications for the balance of power in the region and for global security.

This attack, while narrowly focused on nuclear targets, may mark a broader inflection point in the strategic landscape of what some U.S. defense analysts call the “CRINK” war—referring to the de facto alliance of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

This morning Mike Gallagher, the former chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and now a national security adviser, said the strike marked a return to credible power projection.

“Deterrence comes from dominant force and the willingness to use it,” he posted to X. “Last night, President Trump took a critical step toward restoring deterrence in the Middle East and around the world.”

According to senior U.S. defense officials, the strikes involved a small number of stealth bombers supported by aerial refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft operating from bases in the Middle East and Europe. The targets included Iran’s deeply buried Natanz uranium enrichment complex and secondary facilities near Arak and Fordow.

Of these, Fordow is considered Iran’s most fortified nuclear site—tunneled into a mountainside near the holy city of Qom and designed to survive conventional airstrikes. Reaching it requires specialized bunker-penetrating munitions. Only the United States possesses weapons capable of striking such hardened targets: most likely the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb built to bore through hundreds of feet of reinforced rock and concrete. Defense sources say multiple sequential detonations would be required to break through the mountain’s layers and disable the underground enrichment halls.

Early satellite imagery and Iranian state media appeared to corroborate the targeting of Natanz, reporting heavy damage and widespread power disruptions across the site and adjacent military compounds. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement vowing retaliation but acknowledged that “enemy aircraft penetrated undetected and struck sensitive infrastructure.”

The United States, by committing its own strategic assets to destroy critical Iranian military infrastructure, has gained the initiative in what could be seen as the first true strategic victory for the West in World War III—a long, undeclared conflict characterized by economic warfare, proxy combat, gray-zone cyber operations, and regional insurgencies. The Pentagon and White House now face critical choices that could significantly shape the remainder of this century.

The strike could come at a high cost, but also could deliver epoch-shifting, decisive strategic benefits. Iran supplies drones to Russia, subsidizes oil to China, and provides weapons to terrorist actors that threaten U.S. bases and allies from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, military and intelligence analysts argue. Its defeat would damage the CRINK axis, remove a key enabler of great power revisionism, and restore American leverage after years of attritional conflict.

Trump’s language Saturday night suggested he may favor such a path.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the American action as “a decisive blow against the terror regime in Tehran.” In a national address hours after the U.S. confirmation, Netanyahu said, “This is not just Israel’s fight—the free world has acted.”

Israeli media reported that the Israeli Air Force had provided electronic warfare support and real-time intelligence for the U.S. strikes, though officials declined to confirm operational details. In Tel Aviv, civilians remained under heightened alert, but there were signs of cautious optimism. “The alliance between Israel and the United States is at full strength,” one senior Israeli official told local media. “We have shifted the strategic calculus in the region.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council convened an emergency session overnight. Government officials condemned the strikes as an act of war and said Tehran would respond “at a time and place of our choosing.” As of Sunday morning EST, no immediate missile launches had been detected. However, Western intelligence agencies were monitoring known Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen for signs of mobilization.

On Iranian social media channels, state-linked accounts circulated images of damaged facilities alongside calls for retaliatory “martyrdom operations” against U.S. and Israeli targets.

The joint U.S.-Israeli operation followed weeks of escalating hostilities, beginning with Israeli airstrikes deep inside Iranian territory that disabled radar arrays, weapons depots, and drone launch sites. Iranian retaliation—including missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities—prompted increasingly urgent warnings from Western capitals that the situation risked spiraling into open regional war.

In Tehran, BBC correspondents reported a rare mix of panic and defiance among civilians. Some feared a full-scale war was imminent. Others expressed anger at their government for failing to protect key military and nuclear assets.

European leaders called for restraint. In an interview late Saturday night EST, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the strike as “a painful but necessary step.” French officials warned of “a dangerous path toward uncontrollable conflict.”

In Washington, current and former intelligence officials said the operation signaled a fundamental shift in U.S. posture.

The Pentagon later confirmed the deployment of additional U.S. forces to the region, including carrier strike groups and long-range missile defense batteries.

Whether the operation succeeds in deterring Iran from restarting its nuclear weapons program—or sparks a wider war in the Middle East—remains uncertain. What is clear is that the seismic shift beneath Fordow began in Iran, but its aftershocks are now reverberating through the war rooms of Beijing and Moscow.

Editor’s Note: The first version of this story was updated to paraphrase President Trump’s remarks, and add a comment from former senator and CCP committee leader Mike Gallagher.