CNN —
By the time President Donald Trump was milling about his golf club in New Jersey on Friday evening, the planes were about to be in the air.
To onlookers at the club, Trump showed little anxiety about his decision to authorize airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities that could have profound ramifications both on US national security and his own presidential legacy. The B-2 stealth bombers carrying 30,000-pound bunker busters were preparing to take off at midnight from their base in Missouri, destined for Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Another set of planes was heading west, a deliberate attempt at misdirection as Trump demanded complete secrecy for his momentous decision.
As Trump escorted around Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, to an event for new members being held in one of the clubhouse’s dining rooms, he was loose and — at least in public — in an easygoing mood, people who saw him said.
“I hope he’s right about the AI,” Trump joked at one point, gesturing to his guest.
Twenty-four hours later, Trump was in the basement Situation Room at the White House, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he watched the strikes he had approved days earlier, codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” play out in real time on the facility’s wall of monitors.
“Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” he said a few hours later during late-night remarks from the White House Cross Hall. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
The decision to go ahead with strikes thrusts the United States directly into the Middle East conflict, raising worries about Iranian reprisals and questions about Trump’s endgame. It came after days of public deliberation, as Trump alternated between issuing militaristic threats against Iran on social media and holding private concerns that a military strike could drag the US into prolonged war.
Yet by Thursday, the same day he instructed his press secretary to announce he was giving Iran two weeks to return to the negotiating table before deciding on a strike, allies who spoke to him said it was clear that the decision was already made.
Speaking on NBC Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said Trump retained the ability to call off the strikes “until the very last minute.” But he elected to go ahead.
Administration officials went to great lengths to conceal their planning. Deferring the strike decision for a fortnight appeared in keeping with the mission’s attempts at diversion – a tactic designed to obscure the attack plans, even though Trump held off giving a final go-ahead until Saturday, according to senior US officials.
By the end of the week, US officials had come to believe Iran was not ready to return to the table and strike a satisfactory nuclear deal after Europeans leaders met with their Iranian counterparts on Friday, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Trump’s two-week public deadline lasted only 48 hours before he took one of the most consequential actions of his presidency. The operation began at midnight ET Friday, with the B-2 bombers launching from Missouri on an 18-hour journey that was the planes’ longest mission in more than two decades, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Sunday morning Pentagon briefing.
“This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called,” Hegseth said alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. “It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.”
Discussions about potential options for American strikes on Iran began in earnest between Trump and members of his national security team during a weekend retreat at Camp David in early June, where CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed Trump on US assessments that Israel was prepared to imminently begin strikes.
The options for Trump to join Israel in its campaign had been drawn up in the months beforehand, with the president’s advisers having already worked out differences among themselves over what options were on the menu for him to decide from.
In the week before he made the final call for US stealth bombers and Navy submarines to target three Iranian nuclear sites, Trump held briefings each day with his national security team in the basement Situation Room to discuss attack plans — and to weigh the potential consequences.
Trump came to the secret talks with two principal concerns: that a US attack be decisive in taking out the highly fortified sites, including the underground Fordow enrichment facility; and that any action he took did not pull the US into the type of prolonged, deadly war he promised to avoid as a candidate.
On the first point, officials were confident in the US bunker-busting bombs’ ability to penetrate the facility, even though such an action hadn’t been tested previously. Caine said Sunday that the initial assessment shows “extremely severe damage and destruction” to Iran’s three nuclear sites, though he noted it will take time to determine the ultimate impact to the country’s nuclear capabilities. (Iranian officials downplayed the impact of the US strikes to their nuclear facilities on Sunday.)
But on the second question of a prolonged war, officials could hardly promise the president that Iran’s reprisals — which could include targeting American assets or personnel in the region — wouldn’t draw the US into a new quagmire.
“As the president has directed, made clear, this is most certainly not open-ended,” Hegseth said Sunday. “Doesn’t mean it limits our ability to respond. We will respond if necessary.”
The uncertainly seemed to give Trump pause, and throughout the week he said in public he hadn’t yet made a decision, even if behind the scenes it appeared to Trump’s advisers that his mind was made up.
Trump departed his Bedminster golf club Saturday afternoon and returned to the White House for a scheduled “national security meeting” — travel that was unusual for the president on a weekend but was previewed on his daily scheduled released the day prior.
The US conveyed to Iran through back-channel discussions that the strikes Trump ordered Saturday would be contained and that no further strikes were planned going forward, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
But Trump’s public message Saturday night after the strikes — warning of “far greater” future US attacks if Iran retaliates — underscored the unpredictable period he is entering in the Middle East.
In April, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran on a potential nuclear agreement, warning Tehran to strike a deal within 60 days – by mid-June. At the same time, Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on attacking Iran so he could give talks the time and space to show progress.
A first round of talks was held in mid-April between the US and Tehran in Oman, led by Trump’s foreign envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Despite optimistic notes sounded following the conversations, there was little progress toward an actual nuclear deal.
On June 8 – less than a week before Trumps’ 60-day deadline was set to expire – he huddled with his advisers at Camp David, where he was presented with potential options on Iran. The next day, Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone.
Several weeks earlier, Netanyahu had told a group of US lawmakers that Israel was going to strike Iran — and he was not seeking permission from the US to do so. Sixty-one days after Trump’s ultimatum, Israel launched unprecedented strikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear program and military leaders.
“Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know, I gave them, I don’t know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,” Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash after the Israeli strikes began.
But senior Trump officials also initially distanced themselves from the attack, issuing statements that Israel took unilateral action and the US was not involved.
As Israel continued its military campaign in Israel, Trump traveled to Alberta, Canada, for a G-7 summit, only to return to Washington early “because of what’s going on in the Middle East,” the White House said. Trump spent much of the past week meeting in the Situation Room with his national security team to review attack plans and their potential consequences.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement dictated by Trump: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
But there were signs that diplomacy was not moving forward. Witkoff made attempts at meeting his Iranian interlocutor, Araghchi, with little luck.
Ater European leaders met with Iran’s foreign minister on Friday in Geneva, US officials felt it appeared the Iranians would not sit down with the US without Trump asking Netanyahu to stop Israel’s attacks — something Trump was not willing to do, sources said.
That afternoon, on his way to his New Jersey club, Trump told reporters that his two-week timeframe was the “maximum” amount of time, and he could make up his mind sooner.
Ahead of Saturday’s strikes, the US gave Israel a heads up it was going to attack. Netanyahu held a five-hour meeting with top Israeli officials that lasted through the US strikes, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone again afterward, and the Israeli prime minister praised the US attack in a video message, saying it was carried out “with complete operational coordination between the IDF and the United States military.”
The US had also notified some Gulf partners that it was ready to strike Iran within the coming days, but it did not specify targets and time frame, according to a source familiar with the matter. The message was delivered verbally, the source said, and there was a meeting at the White House where some of these Gulf partners were told.
Trump and his team were in contact with top congressional Republicans before Saturday’s strikes, but top Democrats were not told of his plans until after the bombs had dropped, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. Hegseth said Sunday that congressional leaders were notified “immediately” after planes were out of Iranian airspace.
The operation began at midnight Eastern Time Friday into Saturday morning. Caine said that B-2 bombers launched from the US, some headed West as a decoy while the rest “proceeded quietly to the East with minimal communications throughout the 18-hour flight.”
The unprecedented US operation involved seven stealth B2 bombers. All told, over 125 aircraft were involved, including the B2s, refueling tankers, reconnaissance planes and fighter jets.
At approximately 5 p.m. ET, Caine said, a US submarine “launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets” at the Isfahan nuclear site.
And shortly after, at approximately 6:40 p.m. ET, or 2:10 a.m. local time, the lead B-2 bomber plane launched two bunker-buster bombs at Fordow nuclear site, Caine said, and the “remaining bombers then hit their targets.” Those additional targets were struck, Caine said, “between 6:40 p.m. ET and 7:05 p.m. ET.”
The US military then “began its return home,” Caine said, noting that no shots were fired by Iran at the US on the way in or out.
After US planes had left Iranian airspace, Trump revealed the attack to the world on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump wrote, adding that “a full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.”
CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Zachary Cohen, Sarah Ferris, Betsy Klein, Manu Raju, Morgan Rimmer, Jim Sciutto and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
