itstargetnews
The US-Israeli strikes on Iran this weekend were described on Monday as a “massive, overwhelming attack” that came just hours after US President Donald Trump, the military’s top commander, approved it.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference Monday morning from Washington that more than 100 aircraft were launched from land and sea beginning at 9:45 a.m. Tehran time (1:15 a.m. ET) in “a single, synchronized wave.”
“There was a massive overwhelming attack across all areas of the war, with more than a thousand targets hit in the first 24 hours,” Caine said.
Caine said the president gave the go-ahead Friday at 3:38 p.m. ET. At the time, he was on Air Force One headed for Texas with Republican Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and actor Dennis Quaid.
The order was then forwarded through the Minister of War Pete Hegseth to Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads US Central Command, which includes the Middle East in its areas of responsibility. Central Command on Monday published on X unclassified satellite images of unspecified attacks, in which individuals, equipment and buildings are trapped inside military sights, followed by explosions.
The military operation came after Israeli and US authorities had been monitoring the movements of senior Iranian leaders for weeks, an Israeli military official and another person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press before a Pentagon news conference. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Before the attack, the CIA had been monitoring the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for months.
Caine said the coordinated operations with the Israeli armed forces were of an “unprecedented scale”.
Cyber operations preceded air and ground attacks
The strikes in multiple locations killed several military and political officials, including Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Mohammed Pakpour. It is clear that civilians were also killed, and the Iranian Red Crescent Society said on Monday that at least 555 people had been killed in the US-Israeli operation.
Khamenei (86) was killed on Saturday, Iranian state media reported, in Israeli and US airstrikes that destroyed his compound in central Tehran. Iranian state media reported that his daughter, granddaughter, daughter-in-law and son-in-law were also killed, according to Reuters.
Inside Iran, some mourned Khamenei while others celebrated his death, exposing a deep rift in the country. Khamenei built Iran into a powerful anti-American force, with militant proxies across the Middle East during his resolute 36-year rule.
“It was quite a surprise that he chose to be in his office on his property — not in a hideout, not in a bunker — especially at a time when an American attack, an American-Israeli attack, seemed imminent,” Vali Nasr, a professor of international relations and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, told CBC News.
Front burner29:47War against Iran
Hegseth and Caine did not go into specific details about the attack that killed Khamenei. Asked by reporters about his reaction to the Shiite cleric’s death, Hegseth said, “I think Israel did a great job in carrying out that operation.”
Caine said that, like the operation that dropped massive bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, what is being called Operation Epic Fury also involves stealth B-2 bombers making a 37-hour round trip from the continental US
Those attacks last year were carried out between 2:10 a.m. and 2:35 a.m. local time, but on this occasion it was a daytime operation that Caine said provided “the speed, surprise and ferocity of the action.”
In addition to the traditional four branches of the military, Caine mentioned several times the use of cyber technologies in attacks, as well as the US space force. Those service branches “effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks,” he said, “degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”
Hegseth did not provide details Monday when asked about the ultimate goals of the operation, how long it might last or what success would look like, saying it would harm U.S. forces.
The US claims to have air superiority over Iran
Trump did not fully articulate the rationale to the American public for launching airstrikes against Iran, nor did he seek approval from the US Congress before the strike.
The American president said ua video released after the first attacks that he wanted to “defend the American people by eliminating immediate threats from the Iranian regime.” AND US Defense Intelligence Agency Assessment last May he estimated that Iran was about a decade away from an intercontinental ballistic military capability, “if Tehran chooses to pursue that capability.”
The assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has led some, including US President Donald Trump, to hope it will force regime change in Iran. For The National, CBC’s Eli Glasner explains whether attacks can change government and what needs to happen for real change to happen.
Also last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency said that “Iran is almost certainly not producing nuclear weapons, but … has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, should it choose to do so.”
Trump said the attack over the weekend was aimed at ensuring Iran could not have nuclear weapons, curb its missile program and eliminate threats to the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
Trump administration officials told US congressional staff in private briefings on Sunday that intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US, three people familiar with the briefings told The Associated Press.
Two top Pentagon officials said Monday that the attack took months of planning, detailing a massive military build-up in the region, led by two aircraft carrier strike groups, USS Lincoln and USS Ford.
Deployed for NATO-focused operations in the Atlantic and North Sea for most of 2025, the Ford was redeployed to the Caribbean in November to support U.S. efforts to capture Venezuelan autocrat Nicolas Maduro, then redeployed to the Middle East.
Caine said that thanks to American and Israeli pilots and logisticians, air superiority over Iran has now been established.
But the question remains what to do next. The US called on the Iranian people to rise to the occasion, which comes after weeks of widespread domestic protests that began in late December and were ultimately brutally suppressed by the Iranian regime.
Asked by reporters on Monday whether there were boots on the ground in Iran at the moment, Hegseth said: “No, but we’re not going to get into an exercise about what we will or won’t do.”
Reuters previously reported that CIA assessments presented to the White House in the weeks before the Iran attacks concluded that Khamenei, if killed, could be replaced by hard-liners from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or equally hard-line clerics, two sources said.
