Washington / Tehran — The Middle East has entered one of its most turbulent chapters in decades, following a series of large-scale military operations carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran. Beginning in mid-2025 and escalating sharply into early 2026, these strikes have reshaped regional security dynamics, sparked fierce political debate at home and abroad, and raised urgent questions about the future of diplomacy, nuclear non-proliferation, and international law.
Here is a comprehensive look at what has happened, who is involved, and what the world’s leading voices are saying about it.
How It All Began: The June 2025 Operation
On the evening of June 21, 2025, the United States carried out air- and sea-launched strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran in an operation that U.S. officials described as “very narrowly tailored” to “destroy or severely degrade Iran’s nuclear program” and compel Iran to reach a negotiated settlement.
The mission, codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, involved approximately 4,000 military personnel and targeted three Iranian nuclear sites simultaneously.
According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, the operation involved over 125 U.S. aircraft, including seven B-2 Spirit bombers, and the use of approximately 75 precision-guided weapons — among them 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) — carried out over the course of just 25 minutes. The MOPs were deployed against nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow, with the Fordow site described by U.S. officials as particularly concerning due to its location deep underground. A U.S. submarine also launched over two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a nuclear facility in Isfahan.
President Trump announced the results of the operation publicly, claiming that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been decisively struck. However, the full extent of the damage remained a subject of debate among analysts and intelligence officials for months afterward.
The Broader Context: A Region Already at War
The June 2025 strikes did not occur in a vacuum. Since Israel’s attack on Iran on June 13, 2025, the two countries had been effectively at war, with Israel conducting airstrikes throughout Iran — targeting sites related to Iran’s military, nuclear, and ballistic missile programs — while Iran launched ballistic missile and drone attacks against Israel. The fighting reportedly killed over 400 people in Iran, including a number of senior military officials, and around two dozen in Israel.
Since April 2025, the United States had been engaged in indirect diplomatic negotiations with Iran. After the Israeli attack, Iran canceled a sixth round of talks that had been scheduled for June 15.
This diplomatic collapse preceded the U.S. decision to act militarily, a sequence of events that critics have since pointed to as evidence that a negotiated resolution may have been within reach before the strikes took place.
Escalation Into 2026: A Second Round of Strikes
The situation escalated further in late February 2026. The United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, with President Trump accusing Iran of building nuclear weapons that could “soon” reach U.S. allies and the American homeland.
The 2026 campaign began with joint airstrikes by the U.S. and Israel against military and government sites in the cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and Kermanshah. The scale of the operation was described by multiple observers as the most significant U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Israeli and joint U.S.-Israeli strikes over the preceding year had significantly undermined Iran’s defenses and nuclear program, while Iran’s counter-strikes on Arab Gulf states in 2026 may have left it further diplomatically isolated.
Iran’s Retaliation: Striking Back at U.S. Bases
Iran did not remain passive. Iran bombed Qatar’s Al Udeid military airbase, which hosts U.S. troops, on June 23, 2025, in retaliation for Washington’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. No deaths or injuries were recorded, and satellite imagery showed that military aircraft had been evacuated in anticipation of the attack. Iran’s response was largely interpreted as a symbolic, face-saving exercise.
In the months that followed, Iran continued to conduct strikes on regional military positions associated with the United States and its allies. Since the conflict intensified, the death toll in Iran alone surpassed 1,300, with additional casualties recorded across the region, including U.S. soldiers. Hundreds of thousands were displaced.
The Nuclear Question: What the Evidence Actually Shows
Central to the justification for the strikes was the claim that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat. However, independent assessments have painted a more complicated picture.
Trump’s accusation that Iran is building nuclear weapons that could “soon” reach the U.S. is contradicted by a 2025 federal government assessment that said Iran is years away from the ability to produce long-range missiles.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated there is no proof Iran is building an atomic bomb. Iran has said it is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its enrichment efforts are for civilian nuclear power generation.
On March 4, 2026, based on analysis of satellite imagery, the IAEA reported “no damage to facilities containing nuclear material in Iran,” but some damage at entrances to Iran’s largest enrichment facility. The IAEA had withdrawn its inspectors from Iran in June 2025 after the initial airstrikes, meaning the full impact on Iran’s enrichment program remains unclear.
The Defense Intelligence Agency released a missile threat assessment in May 2025 concluding that Iran could potentially develop a long-range missile capable of reaching the U.S. by 2035 — if it chooses to pursue that path.
Political Fallout in the United States
The strikes ignited a sharp political debate inside the United States, cutting across party lines in ways that are unusual in matters of national security.
The strikes reignited a debate over the constitutionality and limits of presidential war powers, particularly the president’s ability to order military operations against Iran without prior consultation with Congress.
A CNN poll conducted after the June 2025 airstrikes showed that a majority of Americans disapproved of the decision to launch airstrikes against Iran, by a margin of 56% to 44%.
Some lawmakers from both parties expressed support for the military action, while others raised serious constitutional concerns. Democratic Representative Jim Himes stated that congressional attention to matters of war must come before bombs fall, citing the constitutional requirement for legislative involvement. Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said the president had misled the country about his intentions, failed to seek congressional authorization, and risked American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East. Republican Representative Thomas Massie also condemned the strikes as unconstitutional, arguing there was no imminent threat to the United States from Iran.
On the other side, some lawmakers praised the action. Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was among the first Democratic senators to support the strikes, saying he believed it was the correct decision and expressing gratitude for the U.S. military.
International Reactions: Divided World
The global response was sharply divided along geopolitical lines.
At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on June 22, 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an end to the fighting and said that diplomacy must prevail. European leaders urged restraint and de-escalation. The Chinese and Russian foreign ministries formally condemned the U.S. strikes. Iran’s neighbors largely expressed concern about the potential for further military escalation.
In a joint statement with the leaders of France and Germany on February 28, 2026, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned Iranian counter-strikes and called for a resumption of diplomacy. The leaders reiterated shared positions that Iran should end its nuclear program, curtail its ballistic missile development, cease the repression of its own citizens, and stop supporting armed groups abroad. The UK did not participate militarily in the strikes.
The United Nations and several countries that were not directly involved condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes or said they undermined regional stability. Legal experts and a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers described them as illegal under U.S. law and a violation of Iran’s sovereignty under international law. A separate bipartisan group argued that the operations were legal under existing U.S. statutes and the War Powers Act.
The Humanitarian Cost and the Path Forward
Beyond the military and political dimensions, the human consequences of the ongoing conflict continue to grow. Civilian infrastructure has been damaged, populations have been displaced, and regional trade and energy supply routes face ongoing disruption.
Analyst Fareed Zakaria argued that the U.S. strikes undermined the rules-based international order and that military action will not prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons over the long term — contending that the only reliable path is through sustained diplomacy.
Critics of the military approach point out that in the days before the initial U.S. strikes, the Iranian government had indicated a willingness to sign a comprehensive nuclear nonproliferation agreement, with mediators in Oman describing the terms on the table as going further than any previous agreement. The Trump administration chose not to pursue that path.
Whether further military action or renewed diplomatic engagement will define the next chapter remains the central question facing policymakers in Washington, Tel Aviv, Tehran, and beyond.
What to Watch Going Forward
Several critical developments will shape how this conflict evolves in the weeks and months ahead. These include whether Iran reconstitutes any portion of its nuclear infrastructure, whether Iran’s retaliatory strikes on U.S.-allied nations prompt another round of military responses, whether Congress moves forward with war powers resolutions challenging the president’s authority, and whether the IAEA is permitted to resume inspections of affected sites to provide transparent, verified assessments of Iran’s nuclear status.
What is clear is that the decisions made in this period will have long-lasting consequences — not only for the Middle East, but for the international frameworks governing nuclear proliferation, the use of military force, and the role of diplomacy in resolving the world’s most dangerous disputes.
This article is based on verified reporting from the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Al Jazeera, PBS NewsHour/PolitiFact, Wikipedia’s documented military operations pages, and the UK House of Commons Library.