Washington (AP) As U.S. officials evaluated Tehran’s nuclear aspirations and the risk of reprisal against American interests, the Trump administration on Sunday indicated a willingness to resume negotiations with Iran and prevent a protracted conflict in the wake of an unexpected attack on three of the nation’s nuclear installations.
The coordinated messaging from the secretary of state, top military adviser, vice president, and head of the Pentagon under President Donald Trump conveyed a sense of confidence that any damage would be controlled and that Iran’s lack of military weapons would eventually force it back to the negotiating table.
At a press conference, Vice President JD Vance stated that the strikes had offered Tehran the chance to resume talks with Washington, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that the United States does not want to go to war with Iran.
Hegseth stated that regime change was not and has not been the goal of this expedition.
However, Washington does not have complete control over the situation that is developing because Tehran has a number of tools at its disposal to counter the aerial bombings, which might escalate the Middle East conflict and have worldwide consequences. Iran can target American sites in the area, obstruct oil shipping via the Strait of Hormuz, launch cyberattacks, or intensify its nuclear program, which may feel more necessary in the wake of the U.S. strike.
All of that begs the issue of whether the strikes, out of caution, will reinvigorate negotiations or usher in a far more savage period of conflict. The onslaught swiftly spread to domestic politics in the United States, where Trump decided to use a portion of his Sunday to target his detractors.
Following his Saturday night speech from the White House, Trump took to social media on Sunday to criticize Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who had voiced opposition to the president using force without express congressional approval.
Yesterday, we achieved a remarkable military victory by removing the bomb from their possession—and if they could, they would use it! Trump stated in the Truth Social post.
Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated during their joint Pentagon briefing that Operation Midnight Hammer used decoys and deception and encountered no Iranian resistance.
Caine said that the operation’s objective of demolishing the nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan had been accomplished.
According to Caine, preliminary battle damage assessments show that all three sites experienced extremely serious damage and destruction, while final battle damage assessments will take some time.
In a televised interview, Vance stated that he was extremely certain that we have significantly slowed down their development of a nuclear weapon, even if he would not reveal sensitive intelligence regarding what we have observed on the ground.
When pressed further, he stated on NBC’s Meet the Press that he believes their program has been delayed for a very long period. The Iranians won’t be able to create a nuclear weapon for many, many years, in my opinion.
The vice president claimed that Trump made his choice after concluding that the Iranians were not behaving in good faith and that the United States had engaged in vigorous negotiations with Iran in an effort to reach a peaceful resolution.
“I think it gives us a chance to restart these talks, to restart this relationship, and to get us to a point where Iran can decide not to be a threat to the United States or its neighbors, and if they’re willing to do that, the United States is all ears,” Vance said.
There are currently no planned military strikes against Iran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on CBS’s Face the Nation, unless they tamper and attack American interests.
Given his pledges to his coalition of voters not to involve the United States in a protracted conflict, Trump has threatened other nations in the past but has frequently backed down or failed to follow through. Whether Iran considered avoiding a larger conflict to be in its best interests was not immediately apparent.
After the United States intervened in the conflict between Israel and Iran, a large portion of the world is dealing with the fallout from the strikes and the possibility that they will spark further hostilities throughout the Middle East. Iranian nuclear facilities and generals were the targets of Israeli attacks that started on June 13 local time. Iran retaliated, setting off a chain of events that led to the U.S. attack.
Iran denounced the activities as a breach of its sovereignty and international law, while U.S. officials emphasized that Washington was targeting exclusively nuclear targets and urged caution.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, stated that Washington bears full responsibility for whatever retaliatory measures Tehran may take.
At a press conference in Turkey, he stated that they had crossed a very high red line by targeting nuclear installations. I’m not sure how much space there is for diplomacy.
The U.S. military operation was denounced by China and Russia, where Araghchi was traveling for negotiations with President Vladimir Putin. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the assaults a flagrant breach of international law and called for a return to a diplomatic and political path. A statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry cautioned about the possibility that the conflict could escalate to a worldwide scale.
In order to safeguard its interests, citizens, and friends, the United Kingdom is deploying military hardware into the region, according to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. According to his office, he discussed the necessity of Tehran resuming talks with Trump on Sunday.
The leaders of France, Germany, Canada, and Italy all agreed that talks needed to start off quickly. Emmanuel Macron of France met with the sultan of Oman and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Iran might attempt to halt oil exports across the Strait of Hormuz, which might result in inflationary shocks similar to those that the globe experienced following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As the conflict between Israel and Iran grew more intense, oil prices rose in the financial markets, rising 21% in the last month.
No new information regarding Iran’s nuclear capability was revealed in the Pentagon briefing. Hegseth claimed that Trump’s schedule for negotiations with Iran on its nuclear aspirations was the reason behind the strike schedule.
According to Hegseth, Iran discovered that when Trump says he wants peace and talks for 60 days, he actually means 60 days of peace and negotiation. Otherwise, there won’t be a nuclear program or new nuclear capacity. He meant it.
The White House had hinted last Thursday that Trump would wait up to two weeks to decide whether to launch an attack on Iran or keep up discussions, which made that statement more nuanced. However, the U.S. was able to carry out the operations without Iranian resistance because of Iran’s poor air defenses.
According to Caine, Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it seems that their surface-to-air missile systems failed to detect us during the mission.
Hegseth stated that the decision to relocate many B-2 aircraft from their Missouri base earlier Saturday was intended to serve as a ruse to confuse Iranians. The United States also employed other deception techniques, according to Caine, using fighters to shield the B-2 bombers that dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s locations at Fordo and Natanz.
The strikes took place in Washington on Saturday between 6:40 and 7:05 p.m., or about 2:10 a.m. on Sunday in Iran.
This article was written by Associated Press writers Giada Zampano in Rome, Samuel Petrequin in Paris, and Brian Melley and Elise Morton in London.
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