The world is bracing for an Iranian response after the United States attacked key Iranian nuclear facilities, joining Israel in the largest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
With damage visible from space after 13,500-kilogram US bunker-busting bombs fell on a mountain above Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, Tehran vowed to defend itself at all costs, Reuters reported.
Iran fired another rocket into Israel, wounding dozens of people and flattening buildings in Tel Aviv. The US State Department ordered family members of its employees to leave Lebanon and advised citizens in other parts of the region to stay away or limit travel.
The US Department of Homeland Security warned of an “elevated threat environment in the United States.” Police in major US cities have increased patrols and deployed additional resources to religious, cultural and diplomatic sites.
Tehran has so far failed to follow through on its threats to retaliate against the United States, whether by targeting American bases or trying to cut off global oil supplies, but the question is how long that will take.
Speaking in Istanbul, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said his country would consider all possible responses. There would be no return to diplomacy until it retaliates, he said.
“The US has shown that it has no respect for international law. It only understands the language of threat and force,” he said.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told X that the initiative “is now on the side that plays smart, avoids blind strikes. The surprises will continue!”
US President Donald Trump, in a televised address, called the strikes a “spectacular military success” and boasted that Iran’s key uranium enrichment facilities had been “completely destroyed.”
But his own officials have given more nuanced assessments and, with the exception of satellite photos that appear to show craters on a mountain above Iran’s underground facility at Fordow, there have been no public reports of damage.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said there had been no reported increases in radiation levels off-site following the US strikes.
