Pentagon flexes US military's decoys and strategic deception that took Iran and world by surprise
The U.S. military and Trump administration leveraged strategic deception and decoys to carry out the surprise and successful strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities Saturday evening that took the world by surprise after President Donald Trump indicated such an operation could unfold in the coming weeks, not necessarily days.
Trump announced the Saturday evening strikes on Iran in a Truth Social post that was not preceded by media leaks or speculation that strikes were imminent. The unexpected social media post was followed just hours later by a brief Trump address to the nation while flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.
The strikes, which the administration has described as an overwhelming success that obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities and backed the nation into a corner to make a peace deal, were celebrated by Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine as ones that were cloaked in secrecy and intentionally deceptive to confuse the enemy.
"At midnight Friday into Saturday morning, a large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental United States," Caine said during a Sunday morning press conference from the Pentagon. "As part of the plan to maintain tactical surprise, part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy. A deception effort, known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington and in Tampa."
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Ahead of the Saturday evening strikes, six B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri were en route to a U.S. Air Force base in Guam, U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News.
"The main strike package, comprised of seven B-2 spirit bombers, each with two crew members, proceeded quietly to the east with minimal communications," Caine said. "Throughout the 18-hour flight into the target area, the aircraft completed multiple in-flight refuelings. Once overland, the B-2s linked up with escort and support aircraft in a complex, tightly timed maneuver, requiring exact synchronization across multiple platforms in a narrow piece of airspace, all done with minimal communications."
Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said during a Saturday evening appearance as news broke of the strikes that reports of the bombers were likely part of the "misleading tidbits put out there to suggest that maybe President Trump had had put off the decision."
"Those six B-2 bombers that were heading west toward Guam, they would not have made it to Iran in time to take part in this strike," she said, while speaking with Fox News' Bret Baier Saturday evening. "So, that suggests to me that there was an additional B-1 package that perhaps flew eastward from Whiteman Air Force Base. Again, this was all part of the deception. There was a great deal of sort of misleading tidbits put out there to suggest that maybe President Trump had put off the decision and that this would happen two weeks from now."
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Hegseth said in his remarks before the media Sunday morning that the U.S. military had leveraged "misdirection" and total secrecy, aside from top national security officials, to carry out the strikes "without the world knowing at all."
"It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security. Our B-2s went in and out of … these nuclear sites, in and out and back, without the world knowing at all," Hegseth said. "In that way, it was historic."
It was the longest B-2 spirit bomber mission since 2001, the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown and the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history, Hegseth and Caine said during the Sunday press conference.
The surprise strikes following Trump saying, via comment delivered by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Thursday during a press briefing, that he would make a decision on Iran within the next two weeks, which initially signaled that such strikes could unfold in the coming weeks and not imminently.
"I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,'" Leavitt said at a White House press briefing Thursday, quoting Trump.
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Trump said in his address to the nation late Saturday that "Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated" and that Iran now faces the choice of making peace or facing future attacks.
"And Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier."
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Trump described the strikes as a "spectacular military success."
"A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan," he said. "Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. 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. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success."
"For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America. Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs," Trump continued. "That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular."