Iran will target US military after Trump promises to use bunker busters on them

President Donald Trump has drawn a very clear red line in the sand with Iran, and the clock is ticking fast.

In his State of the Union address, the president made it crystal clear that he will not let the world's top state sponsor of terrorism [you know it as Iran] get its hands on a nuclear weapon.

"I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror … to have a nuclear weapon," Trump told a joint session of Congress.

This comes after he publicly laid down a tight deadline back on February 19, giving Tehran roughly 10 to 15 days to cut a real deal. 

"I would think that would be enough time, 10, 15 days, pretty much maximum," Trump said at the time, adding that without an agreement, "it's going to be unfortunate for them."

Tuesday night from the House floor, he ramped up the pressure, confirming talks are happening but noting Iran still hasn't uttered the magic words he demands.

"We are in negotiations with them," Trump said. "They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.'"

He also took a moment to flash back to the decisive 2025 U.S. strike, Operation Midnight Hammer, which he said "obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program."

Tehran got the message loud and clear after that hit: don't even think about rebuilding. Yet here we are, with Iran apparently trying to restart the whole thing.

This mix of a hard diplomatic timer and a blunt reminder of American military muscle signals a more intense phase in this standoff, especially as negotiations grind on in Geneva.

Trump hasn't spelled out exactly what comes next if Iran blows off his terms, but he told reporters earlier this month that if no solid deal happens, "bad things will happen," and he's weighing additional moves.

With the SOTU in the books and the deadline already rolling, the next few days could decide if we get a breakthrough on the nuclear front or if things head toward serious confrontation in the Middle East.

Backing up the tough talk is the biggest show of U.S. naval power in the region since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the most advanced carrier in the fleet, pulled into Souda Bay, Crete, on Monday. It links up with the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been running around-the-clock flight ops in the Arabian Sea since late January.

Together, these strike groups give the U.S. 14 major warships, including nine Arleigh Burke-class destroyers loaded with Tomahawk missiles.

Adding to the firepower, twelve F-22 Raptor stealth fighters landed at Ovda Airbase in southern Israel.

As national security analyst Joe Funderburke pointed out in Small Wars Journal, "The F-22 is not a simple show-of-force aircraft. It is designed to suppress enemy air defenses and protect penetrating strike platforms like the B-2 Spirit bomber, the same combination used to devastate Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz nine months ago."

Trump's shout-out to Operation Midnight Hammer, where B-2 bombers dropped those massive 30,000-pound bunker busters, basically serves as the playbook for whatever might follow this deadline.

While the 2025 strike was a clean, surgical surprise, the current force posture points to something potentially much wider, given Iran's threats of a strong counterpunch.

After Midnight Hammer, Iran's reaction stayed pretty restrained, and they had some forewarning. This time around, Tehran is vowing a much harder response and claiming any U.S. troops in the region are fair game.

On top of the nuclear squeeze, Trump highlighted the brutal crackdown on recent protests in Iran.

"Just over the last couple of months with the protests, they’ve killed at least, it looks like, 32,000 protesters — 32,000 protesters in their own country," the president said. "They shot them and hung them."

Team Trump has made it plain: any deal means Iran stops all uranium enrichment cold and gives ironclad, verifiable proof the program can't come back, demands the regime has shot down repeatedly.

Both sides seem convinced the other is bluffing.

Trump is selling this window as the last real shot at diplomacy, backed by unmatched force. Iranian leaders keep brushing off the threats and promising massive retaliation against U.S. forces and allies if attacked.

Even so, U.S. and Iranian teams are set to sit down again in Geneva on Thursday. The stakes couldn't be higher.

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US sends F-22s to Israel while Trump ponders pounding Iran

American F-22 fighter jets touched down at an Israeli Air Force base Tuesday evening as tensions with Iran continue to soar.

According to reports from Walla's Amir Bohbot and Israel's public broadcaster, at least a dozen of these stealth killing machines, among the most advanced fighters on the planet and exclusive to the U.S. arsenal, landed amid the escalating showdown between Washington and Tehran.

President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the limits of U.S. military leverage against Iran, per sources familiar with the matter cited by left-leaning CBS News. This frustration follows briefings where aides told the president that, unlike the recent operation that removed Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, any move against Iran would demand far more than a single strike. The Monday CBS report noted that such an action could drag the U.S. into a prolonged military campaign across the Middle East.

Pentagon officials earlier this week voiced serious concerns about the potential costs of such a campaign, warning it could claim the lives of American troops and our allies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ and Axios highlighted that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine strongly opposed war with Iran, a claim Trump pushed back against in a Truth Social post. The WSJ added that several other Pentagon officials echoed similar warnings to Caine, though he was the most prominent voice.

Trump himself said General Caine "would [not like] to see war in Iran, but if a decision is made on going against Iran at a military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won."Sources told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that Trump remains undecided on the path forward: whether to pursue a deal with Iran, launch a weeks-long war aimed at toppling the regime, or opt for a narrower strike to pressure Tehran into accepting better terms.

With fake news and wild speculation flooding the airwaves, even top American and Israeli officials sometimes appear as uncertain about Trump's next move as the rest of us. One emerging option, now being widely leaked according to sources, involves Trump hunting for a middle-ground approach: a limited, short-duration attack on the Islamic Republic.

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The Islamic Revolution's 2026 anniversary could well be its last.

Bottom line: the pieces are moving, the rhetoric is heating up, and the F-22s on Israeli soil are a very clear signal that the Trump administration isn't bluffing when it comes to Iran. Stay tuned; this story is far from over.

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USAF jets intercept 2 Russian bombers off Alaska coast

Two U.S. Air Force stealth fighter jets intercepted a pair of nuclear-capable Russian bombers Friday morning off the coast of Alaska A NORAD spokesman told Fox News. [Sarah Palin said she could see the action from her house--just kidding.]

The bombers, two Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" aircraft, were the first of its kind in a little over a year to approach close to U.S. territory, nearing over Alaska's west coast, about 55 miles from the shore. To be clear, they remained over international airspace, so no harm, no foul.

However, the zone they entered is a U.S. air-defense identification zone (ADIZ), which is defined as airspace extending about 200 miles from the nation's coastline.

We greeted the bombers with two F-22s and stayed with them until they left the ADIZ along the Aleutian Islands, heading west. They did at no time enter North American sovereign airspace.

The Russian "Bears" date back to the 1950s. [I've encountered them flying over the USS Independence CVA-62 heading toward the Mediterranean during the Vietnam War. We greeted them with F-4 Phantoms and the Bear went on its merry way.] These giant birds were met with our F-22s around 10:00 a.m. EDT.

The Tupolev Tu-95 is a huge, four-engine turboprop, and a strategic bomber and missile platform. It was first flown in 1952, entered Soviet service in 1956 and is expected to remain in service until 2040. 

It is the only propeller-powered strategic bomber still in operation, and is one of the loudest monsters in the sky due to the fact that the propeller tips rotate faster than the speed of sound.

Earlier this month, a Russian fighter jet buzzed a U.S.N. reconnaissance plane in the Baltic Sea. The Sukhoi Su-27 jet reportedly came within 20 feet of the American P-8 in international space. We called their maneuver "unprofessional," but luckily the Su-27 pilot was professional enough not to cause an air traffic accident.

Today is the 60th anniversary of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command that monitors all air activity coming from within and outside North American airspace.

Happy anniversary!


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