Why is the US attacking Iran? Here’s what the Trump administration said prompted the strikes
Before the US launched its plan military attack against Iran on Saturday, President Trump had revealed frustration on the progress of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear and proliferation program “armada” to the Middle East. But he said he had not said much about the reasons why the US would carry out a bombing campaign against the regime.
Mr. Trump on Monday outlined the reasons why the United States launched an attack on Iran, bombing more than 1,000 targets in the first days of what he said he expected to be a weeks-long war.
In his first live public remarks about the operation, he gave four reasons for the campaign:
- Destroying Iran’s missile arsenal;
- Destroying Iran’s navy;
- Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons;
- Ensuring that the state cannot continue to arm, finance or direct “terrorist forces” outside its borders.
The chief administrative officer said that this work will continue until these four goals are achieved. The president has said he expects the war to last four or five weeks, but administration officials say the project could be completed sooner or later than Mr.
Here’s what the president and other top officials have to say about why the US is attacking Iran:
The imminent threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missiles
President Trump said on Saturday, hours after the attack began, that his goal was “to eliminate threats from the Iranian government.”
Iran’s “threatening actions endanger the United States, our military, our bases overseas and our allies around the world,” Mr. short address wrote in Truth Social.
He said that after the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, the regime continued to “build long-range missiles that can now threaten our best friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the US mainland.”
But an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency from last year showed that Tehran will not have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US until 2035.
on saturday, senior Trump administration officials told reporters that they had “indications” that Iran might use conventional missiles “before, but if not, simultaneously” any US actions against the regime. The president “wouldn’t sit back and wait to be hit first” and if he had, “the number of casualties and damage would have been much higher” than if the US acted first, they said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that the reason for the attack was Iran’s “capable and lethal ballistic missiles,” which he said were being used “to create a general shield for their nuclear ambitions.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a slightly different reason on Mondaytelling reporters that the Trump administration decided to attack because Israel was planning to attack Iran, and “we knew that would trigger an American military attack.” For that reason, he said, the US chose to strike Iran “by surprise” to get rid of most of its missiles.
Sen. Mark Warner from Virginiathe top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “I have seen no evidence that Iran is in danger of launching any kind of first strike against the United States of America.”
Warner is one of the “Gang of Eight” members of Congress who were briefed by Rubio before the operation began. After another Rubio briefing on Monday, Warner said he did not believe Iran’s missiles would pose a threat to the US — even though they posed a serious threat to Israel.
“This is still a war of choice that some agree is limited by Israeli terms and conditions,” Warner said.
Iran’s nuclear program
The negotiations are over Iran’s nuclear program it had been going on for weeks. In his State of the Union speech last week, Mr. Trump has drawn a red line.
“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain: I will never allow the sponsor of No. “You will not allow that.”
On Friday, hours before the strikes began, the Omani foreign minister, who was the mediator of those discoursessaid that “substantial progress” was being made and a deal was “within our reach.” He told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan that Iran has agreed it will “never have … nuclear material that would make a bomb.”
But on the same day, the president told reporters he was not happy by the way the talks were going on. “I am not happy that they are not willing to give us what we should have,” he said. “I’m not happy about that.”
Mr. Trump wants Iran to stop enriching uranium. Iran has long refused to give up its enrichment capabilities, insisting that the program is intended for peaceful purposes, although in recent years, Iran has enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels, above the purity levels required for most peaceful uses.
“They want to enrich a little. You don’t have to enrich if you have a lot of fat,” said Mr.
Senior administration officials have indicated that they do not believe Iran is negotiating in good faith. They said “it was clear to us that they were in trouble rebuilding everything that was destroyed in Midnight Hammer,” the June campaign that attacked the country’s nuclear facilities, and that Iran’s goal was “to maintain their enrichment capacity, so that in time, they could use it for a nuclear bomb. They concluded that the president had no choice but to act.”
In announcing the invasion of Iran early Saturday, Mr. Trump emphasized that “it has always been the policy of the United States, particularly, my administration, that this terrorist regime will never have a nuclear weapon.”
He said Iran “has rejected every opportunity to give up its nuclear ambitions, and we cannot take it anymore.”
The 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment published by the Defense Intelligence Agency stated, “Iran is unlikely to produce nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that put it in a better position to produce them, if it chooses to do so.”
Rubio told reporters last week that Iran is not currently enriching uranium.
On Sunday, at a second videothe president said the military operation is “necessary to ensure that the American people never face a bloody, nuclear-armed and multi-threat terrorist regime.”
Destroying Iran’s navy
In his first post on Sunday’s Truth Social, Mr. Trump wrote that he was told that “we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them large and important.” And, he added, “We’re following the others – soon they’ll be floating to the bottom of the ocean, too!” The president said another attack destroyed a naval headquarters.
On Monday afternoon, CENTCOM said all 12 Iranian naval vessels in the Gulf of Oman had been destroyed. The regime has relied on its navy to limit shipping in the Strait of Hormuz – a key shipping route for around 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.
The war in Iran has brought the movement of oil tankers on the road visible shape. Shipping giants Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have said they are suspending all shipments by this route.
Oil prices have increased Monday over concerns that prolonged disruptions in crude oil supplies to the region could significantly increase electricity costs, including US gasoline prices.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Monday that the route would be closed and said it would “burn any ship that tries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.”
“We will not allow even one drop of oil to leave this region,” said the IRGC.
But as energy analyst Kevin Book of Clearview Energy told the AP, “Iran actually has two ways to shut down the flow. One is to harass or attack ships, and the other is to lay mines. And without a navy, both of those things would be difficult.”
Cut off funding to terrorist groups that are Iran’s proxies
The president also said on Monday that the attack was aimed at ensuring that “the regime of Iran cannot continue to arm, support and direct terrorist forces outside its borders.”
Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the US State Department in 1984. The state department’s most recent report on terrorism, published in 2023, identified the state as a leading state sponsor of terrorism, “facilitating a variety of terrorist and other illegal activities in the United States and around the world.”
It said that Iran supports terrorist acts by using proxies and partners including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah (known as the Houthis) in Yemen, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, and groups operating in Bahrain, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
Hamas does a terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and captured 251, starting a war with Israel that lasted a little over two years. A ceasefire Gaza is now in its second phase.
Yemen’s Houthis in late 2023 attacked shipping lanes in the Red Sea, “severely disrupting maritime and international trade,” the report said.
Some groups have attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria, the report said, noting that Iran’s IRGC Quds Force and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security support terrorist recruitment and plotting in Africa, Asia, Europe and America.
In recent years, the Israeli Defense Forces have carried out a series of deadly strikes against leaders of major Iranian proxy groups, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, key Houthi official Mohammed al-Ghamari and senior Hamas leaders Yahyah Sinwar, Mohammed Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.
The IDF called a strike that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei “the culmination of an ongoing effort to eliminate the top leadership of the Iranian terror axis.”
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was also killed in Tehran in a 2024 campaign in which the US official. referring to Israelalthough the Israeli soldiers did not respond.
The death of Iranian protesters and regime change
Regime change is not among the reasons for the military campaign written by Mr. Trump on Monday, but the US-Israeli attack targeted a number of top Iranian leaders, including Khamenei, who was killed on the first day. While the US said the Israeli army carried out the strike, they did it afterwards to find wisdom about his location from the CIA.
Mr. Trump said on Monday that 49 senior Iranian leaders had been killed.
In his Saturday video, he called on the Iranian people to finish what the US and Israel started and overthrow the government.
“Now is the time to take control of your future,” he told the Iranian people. “This is the time to act. Don’t let it pass.”
Among the Iranian government blood clots to the protesters in January, there thousands they were killed, Mr. Trump warned of “very strong action” against the state and he told the Iranians that US “help is on the way.”
Over the weekend, he told the Washington Post that the goal is the “liberation of the people” of Iran.
“What I want is the freedom of the people,” he said.
