U.S. Strikes Three Iranian Nuclear Sites: Trump Calls for End of War
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Chart of the week: The states with the highest life expectancy are Massachusetts and Connecticut, at roughly 80-years-old. The lowest are Mississippi and West Virginia at 71.
New York City voters selected 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani to be the Democratic candidate for mayor of the largest city in the U.S. In a surprise victory, Mamdani beat out former-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, 44% to 36% in the primary elections on Tuesday. He will now be the favorite to win the mayoral election in November. Endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, Mamdani is a Democratic socialist. He ran a grassroots campaign and his platform includes things such as rent control, public child care, and government-operated grocery stores. He was born in Uganda and came to the U.S. with his family at age 7. Mamdani outperformed among middle and higher-income voters, as well as college grads, while Cuomo won a larger share of votes from the lower-income cohort.
More: After Joe Biden’s exit and Kamala Harris’ loss in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party has been without a clear leader and direction, split between the establishment wing and the more progressive wing. Strategists are watching local and state elections to see which candidates are garnering enthusiasm.
Abortions have continued to increase gradually in the U.S. despite the reversal of Roe v. Wade three years ago and full abortion bans in more than twelve states. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, there has been a large growth in abortions facilitated through telehealth, by which pills are prescribed over a video call and sent through the mail. In addition, many states have passed “shield laws,” by which providers can send pills to women that live in states that have full or partial abortion bans. In 2024, there were an estimated 1.1M abortions, about 8% more than in 2023.
NBA: The Oklahoma City Thunder won the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history (since relocating to Oklahoma), defeating the Indiana Pacers in seven games. The Pacers’ star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, tore his achilles tendon in the 1st quarter, significantly impacting the rest of the game. While viewership for Game 7 was strong, the series as a whole had the lowest overall ratings since 2007.
More: Haliburton posted a heartfelt letter on X talking about his injury.
Members of NATO agreed to increase their defense spending up to 5% of their GDP in the next decade. It’s a policy President Trump has been pushing for years. The current threshold is 2% and eight countries still fall below that number. Trump called it a "great victory for everybody…we will be equalised shortly, and that's the way it has to be.” The U.S. has consistently been a top contributor (at 3.4%), alongside Poland (4.1%) and Estonia (3.4%). Other countries, such as, UK (2.3%), Germany (2.1%) ,and France (2.1%), have consistently put less to defense.
More: In their official statement after the meeting in the Netherlands, NATO countries reaffirmed their “collective defence” and that “an attack on one is an attack on all.”
Most Americans don’t approve of the bombing of Iran by the Trump Administration and worry it could escalate into a larger war. According to a YouGov poll just days after the attack (more below), 46% of Americans said they strongly or somewhat disapprove, while 35% said they strongly or somewhat approve. The numbers change drastically by party lines, with 68% of Republicans approving compared to 16% of Democrats.
Iran made a number of arrests and executions of government officials this week that they suspected of being Israeli spies. A total of six people have been executed in the past two weeks, according to reports, and several more have been arrested. Iran suspects a full scale spy-network that assisted Israel in the killing of top Iranian military generals and nuclear scientists in the past month. Israel also helped in the U.S. attack that damaged three of the country's most prominent nuclear sites.
U.S. Strikes Three Iranian Nuclear Sites: Trump Calls for End of War
What happened?
At 5:40 p.m. on Saturday, U.S. bomber planes hit three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. The operation, codenamed Midnight Hammer, involved 125 aircraft vessels which included seven B2 bomber planes.
The aircraft left Missouri at 11:40 a.m on Friday for an 18-hour undercover journey. Some were sent to the west Pacific as decoys, while others led the grouping of B2 bomber planes before arriving at the nuclear sites undetected by Iranian defense systems. The operation was opportunistic as Israel had taken out much of Iran’s air defense systems in the days prior through its own attacks.
The B2 bombers attacked Fordow and Natanz while about 24 missile strikes from a U.S. submarine damaged the site of Isfahan. It marks the first time the U.S. has directly attacked Iran (population 92M) on its own soil.
The B2 planes dropped fourteen Massive Ordnance Penetrators (aka bunker buster bombs) on the main nuclear site (Fordo) which is located underneath a mountain near Tehran and is crucial to Iran’s potential nuclear ambitions. The bunker buster bombs, only owned by the U.S., weigh 30,000 lbs each and are able to penetrate 200 ft of earth or 60 ft of concrete before exploding.
Insight: Each bunker buster bomb costs roughly $500M.
The strikes did not cause any Iranian or U.S. casualties and all military aircraft returned safely.
Trump address
Soon after the airstrikes, President Trump delivered a short speech, saying, “Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by [Iran].” He continued, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.”
While the U.S.’ support of Israel is broad and long-standing, it has typically been in the form of military arms and intelligence sharing. Directly striking Iran shortly after Israel had conducted its own strikes against the country marked a new level of collaboration.
How effective were the strikes?
There is back and forth debate about how much damage was done to each of the nuclear sites. President Trump and the White House are calling it one of the great American success stories and saying the effect was “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear sites.
A leaked document of an early intelligence assessment at the Pentagon said the nuclear sites were not fully destroyed and only set Iran back a couple of months. The document said it was a “preliminary, low-confidence report and will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available.”
On Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence wrote,
“New intelligence confirms what [Trump] has stated numerous times: Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.”
Other figures weighed in on the severity of the damage. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said, "I think ‘destroyed’ is going too far. But the program has taken serious damage.” Iran’s foreign minister spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said, “Our nuclear facilities have been severely damaged, that is certain.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and top General Dan Caine gave a press conference on Thursday discussing more details of the strikes.
Flashback: In her opening statement to a Senate Committee on March 25, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard said (regarding Iran), “The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program…Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Iran fires back at the U.S.
Iran launched 14 ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar two days later. 13 of the missiles were shot down by defense systems, according to President Trump, and one other missile exploded in a safe location. There were no casualties and video shows U.S. troops celebrating as the defense system protected their base (video).
Fragile ceasefire takes hold
Shortly after Iran retaliated on Monday, President Trump announced a ceasefire between all sides had been reached, posting a statement on his Truth Social. It wasn’t clear how much communication or formal agreements took place between the parties before that. It has been reported that Qatari officials helped moderate the agreement.
Despite the proclamation of the ceasefire, Israel and Iran briefly continued to exchange missile strikes. Upon learning of this, President Trump was visibly angry on Tuesday and told reporters he was disappointed in both countries, saying,
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f*** they're doing” (video).
Since Tuesday, the ceasefire has been maintained.
A divide within the Republican Party
Meanwhile, there is a divide happening within the MAGA movement, with figures such as Tucker Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steven Bannon frustrated with Trump’s hawkish approach to Iran. They argue the strikes do not align with Trump’s America first policy and distract from the problems of immigration, drug overdose deaths, and focusing our money and efforts in the U.S.
One inflection point was a fiery podcast episode between Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, which went viral online. In the episode, Tucker and Cruz, both Trump supporters, got into a heated disagreement about Israel’s relationship with the U.S, the war with Iran, and regime change as a foreign policy strategy.
Here are a couple of quotes from such figures regarding a war with Iran (some of these quotes were before the strikes).
Representative Majorie Taylor Greene
“When most Americans are walking around, they’re not thinking about Iran,” she said. “They’re very much focused on their American life and their American problems and that’s exactly what they should be focused on.”
Tucker Carlson
“Trump ran for president as a peace candidate. That’s what made him different from conventional Republicans. It’s why he won. A war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of his supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump’s enemies are advocating for it.”Steve Bannon
"What they [Israel] did is they drew us into a war they knew they couldn't finish…they drew us into a war they knew they couldn't defend against. So, this is my problem. We need to reset.”
Trump receives praise from cable television
According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump had staff put together a series of positive cable news stories, social media posts, and interviews that he watched on Sunday after the strikes.
Trading Brain Power for Convenience
Using ChatGPT may provide short-term expediency at the cost of memory and brain power. This was the preliminary conclusion from a research team at MIT Media Lab that conducted a small study to examine the neural and behavioral effects of using LLMs (large language models) versus the brain to write essays.
The research team recruited 54 individuals (ages 18-39) to participate. The individuals were divided into three groups:
LLM: Participants in this group were restricted to using ChatGPT as their sole resource for help writing the essays.
Search Engine: Participants could use any website to help them with their essay, but ChatGPT was prohibited.
Brain-only: Participants were not allowed to use ChatGPT or any website.
You can read the full story here.
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