By Shelby Holliday and Lara Seligman
Saturday morning, flight trackers picked up a host of stealthy U.S. B-2 bombers that took off from their Air Force base in Missouri and headed west over the Pacific. It was a ruse.
Hours later, a group of B-2s attacked Iran's most important nuclear sites from the east, defense officials said, hitting well-defended facilities where giant U.S. bunker busters were thought to have the greatest chance of success. President Trump said U.S. submarines firing cruise missiles joined in the attack, striking other key nuclear facilities.
The move allowed the U.S. to get its bombers over Iran faster and with a lower risk of detection. The timing also helped hide the mission's aim. In the past few days, President Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether to attack to give diplomacy a chance to work. There had been no order given to ready a B-2 strike, officials said Saturday morning.
The net effect of the maneuvers and communications was the impression that Iran had more time before the bombs came.
"Decoy indeed," one of the defense officials said of the westward feint that masked the bombers that carried out the attack. "'Hiding'" them and preserving the element of surprise was critical."
Trump gave the final order to go ahead Saturday afternoon East Coast time at his private club in New Jersey.
"The goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn't expecting it," a senior administration official said of the timing of the president's order.
The Pentagon confirmed the details of the ruse in a briefing Sunday morning in Washington, saying as one group of B-2 bombers headed to the west, another group quietly split off and headed east to attack Iran.
"Tonight I can report to the world the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated," Trump said later Saturday from the White House.
Iranian state media said only minor damage to entrance tunnels was done, and the country's Atomic Energy Organization said it would continue work on its nuclear program.
The U.S. bombers carried GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, bunker-busting U.S. bombs designed to destroy hardened underground targets. A dozen were dropped on Fordow, and another two were used against Natanz, while Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from submarines at Natanz and Isfahan, the defense official said.
It was the first time the GBU-57 had been used in war. The U.S. had produced around 20 of the giant munitions.
The U.S. strike represented the second time in the week-old conflict where Iran may have been misdirected at least in part by talk of diplomacy. Israel's initial strike came days before U.S. and Iranian officials were to meet in Oman for a sixth round of nuclear talks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi complained of deception in the latest strike.
"We were in the middle of negotiations," Aragchi said of the timing while speaking to reporters in Istanbul. Referring to the Trump administration, he said, "I think they have proved that they are not men of diplomacy and that they only understand the language of threat and force, and this is very unfortunate."
The European talks ended without success, as Iran stuck to its insistence on retaining the right to enrich uranium, rejecting the core U.S. demand.
Israeli officials had been optimistic for days that the U.S. would soon join the offensive in Iran for the attack on Fordow, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Israeli security cabinet, the body that makes decisions on the war, convened on Saturday night to discuss and track the U.S. strikes, which they knew were going to take place in a matter of hours, this person said.
Israel didn't want the Iranians to move centrifuges out of Fordow before the U.S. strike, this person said. For this reason, the timing of the strike was kept a closely held secret.
Some flight trackers now believe the B-2s made an intentionally noisy trip west so they could be tracked.
The group of B-2 bombers that split off to attack Iran from the east kept communications to a minimum, the Pentagon said in the briefing Sunday morning.
Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 22, 2025 08:28 ET (12:28 GMT)
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