US told Iran Saturday it would limit strikes to nuke facilities

After successful US Air Force strikes, President Trump warned that any Iranian retaliation would be met with great force.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The US told Iran through diplomatic back channels before its airstrikes that its bombing run would be limited to nuclear enrichment sites, according to Reuters and CBS News reports on Monday.

American officials “reached out to Iran diplomatically on Saturday,” according to the reports, to say that the attack would not be the first salvo of a wider war, and that regime change was not in the offing.

The Iranians seemingly took the notice seriously.

After seven B-2 Spirit bombers dropped Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker busters on the Fordow enrichment site very early on Sunday morning, heavily damaging it, pictures emerged on social media of a long line of trucks standing hours earlier outside the facility.

It was immediately theorized that the Iranians were moving their stock of highly enriched uranium out of harm’s way.

The question of the trucks’ destination remained, with some saying that the uranium had been taken to the Isfahan nuclear site – which was also hit badly in the attack, albeit by about two dozen Tomahawk missiles launched from American submarines.

A “high-ranking Iranian political source” told London-based Amwaj media on Sunday that the American warning had been delivered by a third party and mentioned by name the three sites that were eventually hit, Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.

The report said that “the senior source also confirmed that the targeted sites were evacuated, with ‘most’ of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium kept in secure locations.”

In the event, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that there was no immediate recording of any dangerous nuclear leakage as a result of the American airstrikes.

The United States clearly does not want to get more involved in a confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

When announcing the “spectacular military success” of the US Air Force on Saturday evening, President Donald Trump said, “Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”

He then added that Iran should sue for peace, because “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

However, if the Islamic Republic instigated any retaliation against US troops in the region, or tried to hurt Americans elsewhere, as it soon threatened to do, Trump responded on social media that any such move “will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”

Recent polls in the US show that while a large majority of Americans feel that Iran is a serious national security threat, only a small minority favor getting militarily engaged.

Support for military action is strong among Republicans however, with 60-65% believing that the US must be prepared to act against the Islamic Republic.