Trump threatens more strikes against Iran if it doesn’t negotiate a deal

President Donald Trump declared the U.S. bombing of Iran’s three major nuclear facilities to have been “a spectacular military success” during a Saturday night address to the nation, and left the door open to engaging in more strikes.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Trump said, and warned that the U.S. could still attack other, less significant targets in Iran if its leaders don’t stand down.

“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he said. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

Standing in the White House Cross Hall to deliver a speech that lasted less than four minutes, Trump stopped short of declaring the U.S. to be at war with Iran, but his words made clear that he was willing to enter a deeper, wider conflict.

In fact, the president seemed intent on trying to further intimidate Iran, a dramatic shift from just a few weeks ago, when Trump sounded confident that he was close to a diplomatic agreement with Tehran to further constrain its nuclear program. Trump asserted Saturday that there are “many targets left” in Iran for U.S. forces to attack and vowed to go after them in short order if Iran didn’t relent.

“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” he said.

The remarks came a couple hours after the president’s TruthSocial post announcing that the U.S. had struck three nuclear sites inside Iran.

For several days, Trump had been dangling the threat of the U.S. assisting Israel’s military, which does not have the kind of “bunker-buster” bombs that were deployed in the operation Saturday night, to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities once and for all — a consequence, he suggested, for Tehran’s failure to reach a deal to curb its nuclear program. But the news that U.S. forces had carried out the strikes still came as a surprise, given the White House’s statement on Thursday that Trump might take as long as two weeks to decide whether to take military action.

With Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth standing behind him, Trump offered his congratulations to the military generals who helped plan the attack, the warfighters who carried it out and to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he said he “worked as a team.”

Trump made no effort to justify his decision to a MAGA base that has largely opposed intervening in foreign wars. Nor did he address his decision to act without consulting Congress, a move, many Democrats on Capitol Hill have pointed out, that is unconstitutional.

Rather, he announced that the Pentagon would hold a press conference at 8 a.m. on Sunday before ending his remarks with a word of appreciation.

“I want to just thank everybody. And in particular God, I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military.”