Iran Begins Its Retaliation After Trump’s Decision to Bomb the Country

Iran announced Monday that it has begun its retaliation against the United States after Donald Trump bombed three nuclear facilities over the weekend.

Iranian missiles flew toward U.S. bases in both Qatar and Iraq, while sirens were also heard in Bahrain and Kuwait. Israeli sources said Iran fired 10 missiles at Qatar and one missile at Iraq, CNN reported.

The Qatar-bound missiles targeted the Al Udeid air base, which houses U.S. troops. Iranian state TV announced the news, calling the attack “a mighty and successful response by the armed forces of Iran to America’s aggression.”

Shortly thereafter, Qatar said it reserves the right to respond directly. No casualties have been reported thus far. Three Iranian officials told The New York Times that they had given advance notice to Qatar of the strikes in order to minimize casualties, making it more of a symbolic retaliation.

Israel continued its strikes in Tehran on Monday, bombing Evin Prison, where the Islamic Republic detains many political prisoners. The IDF also once again warned the 10 million residents of the capital to evacuate, stressing that they should stay away from weapons production centers and military bases.

This story has been updated.

Republicans are bending over backward to justify Donald Trump’s attack on Iran.

Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, North Carolina Representative Pat Harrigan tried to explain away U.S. involvement in the Middle East conflict by claiming that the Trump administration was promoting peace through war.

“We’re trying to lower the temperature of global conflict while simultaneously kind of raising it here in order to lower it,” Harrigan said, agreeing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Iran should not retaliate. “It would be Iran’s worst decision … to come back and attack American troops.”

By Monday afternoon, Iran had launched six missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, reported Reuters.

Despite its previous attestations against sending the U.S. to war, it is not clear when Republican leadership will align the party consensus with national opinion and condemn U.S. involvement in Iran.

Trump enjoyed widespread Republican support on the 2024 campaign trail due to an apparently false belief that the MAGA leader would not pursue war—but some of that support is beginning to wane, forging yet another rift in the conservative party.

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie is one of a handful of Republicans to recently turn on the president while Trump fanned the flames of combat between Israel and Iran.

“Let’s not pretend any President has authority to engage in a war without a vote and without funding from Congress. The Constitution requires we vote,” Massie wrote on X Friday.

Massie also chastized House Speaker Mike Johnson for practically handing over Congress’s sole authority to declare war to the White House, questioning online why the leading Republican lawmaker did not “call us back from vacation to vote on military action if there was a serious threat to our country.”

But the president has already turned his extraordinarily well-funded political machine against his naysayers. By Sunday, Trump and his allies had formed a super PAC aimed at kicking Massie out of national politics for good.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene somehow continues to be one of the most coherent and consistent right-wing voices against the U.S. war on Iran.

The MAGA hard-liner lambasted President Trump and his foreign policy on Monday, accusing him of betraying his true supporters in a “complete bait and switch” by expanding U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

“I spent millions of my own money and TRAVELED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY campaigning for President Trump and his MAGA agenda and his promises. And Trump’s MAGA agenda included these key promises: NO MORE FOREIGN WARS. NO MORE REGIME CHANGE. WORLD PEACE. And THIS is what the people voted for. Only 6 months in and we are back into foreign wars, regime change, and world war 3,” Taylor Greene wrote on X.

“It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts, and neocon tv personalities that MAGA hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS! After the bombs were dropped, we were told ‘complete success’ and Iran’s nuclear capabilities were totally wiped out. Then it quickly turned to Iran’s nuclear facilities ‘partially damaged’ and now it’s ‘we don’t know where their enriched uranium is.’”

Greene continued, calling for a world in which her Gen Z children were free of continuous foreign war.

“I am FIGHTING for them to have a future where they can afford to buy a home, afford insurance, invest for retirement, enjoy life, retain their God given freedoms, afford to raise a family under their Christian faith, not be in debt, safety and security, AND NOT HAVE OUR OWN TAX PAYER FUNDED GOVERNMENT DESTROY IT ALL. Contrary to [what] brainwashed Democrat boomers think and protest about, Trump is not a king, MAGA is not a cult, and I can and DO have my own opinion.”

Taylor Greene has been speaking out against the U.S. war on Iran for days now, along with other right-wing voices like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones. This dynamic once again demonstrates the growing split between traditional D.C. neocons and the deep MAGA conservatives at the heart of Trump’s support system.

Trump has floated regime change in Iran nonetheless. At least 430 Iranian civilians have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes so far.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not impressed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sudden ability to keep his mouth shut about U.S. military plans.

Newsmax host Todd Starnes offered his congratulations to Hegseth Saturday for pulling off sweeping strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities without giving up the game.

“Not a single leak. Well done, @SecDef,” Starnes wrote in a post on X.

The New York Democrat didn’t see that as quite the cause for celebration.

“This is like applauding a grown man for being able to wipe their behind,” Cortez responded in a post on X. “Not exactly a vote of confidence.”

Earlier this year, Hegseth sent sensitive details about a U.S. military strike on Yemen to one Signal group chat that had the editor in chief of The Atlantic, and another chat that included his wife, brother, and attorney.

Hegseth’s Pentagon has become “consumed” by the search for leakers, according to Colin Caroll, who served as the chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary before being ousted as the result of a leak investigation. Some believe Caroll’s removal was motivated by an explosive power struggle between defense aides.

“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50 percent of it is probably a leak investigation,” Carroll said in April.

Iranian lawmakers are considering ending their cooperation with a U.N. nuclear watchdog in the wake of a U.S. attack on several key nuclear sites.

Iran’s Parliament is looking to pass a bill that would “suspend Iran’s cooperation” with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a global consortium focused on limiting the use of nuclear power for military purposes, “until we have objective guarantees of the professional behavior of this international organization,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said Monday.

“The world clearly saw that the Atomic Energy Agency has not fulfilled any of its obligations and has become a political tool,” he added.

For months, top American intelligence officials have said that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” In a June report, the Congressional Research Service underscored that “Tehran has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons at some point, but has halted its nuclear weapons program and has not mastered all of the necessary technologies for building such weapons.”

But in the days leading up to the Saturday night attack, Donald Trump flagrantly disregarded the advice of his key advisers, opting to believe another narrative instead.

“I don’t care what she said,” the president told reporters on Tuesday on Air Force One, referring to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s March testimony that Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon. “I think they were very close to having one.”

​​IAEA Director Rafael Grossi said that the damage dealt by America’s weekend airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was expected to be “very significant.”

Iran has argued that it is seeking uranium for peaceful purposes, such as expanding its nuclear energy program. It has undergone years of nuclear site inspections by the IAEA, and as of last week was allowing IAEA inspectors to remain in the country, according to Grossi.

The only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East is presumed to be Israel, which will not confirm or deny possessing what the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates are approximately 90 nuclear weapons.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, chastised Israel during an emergency U.N. Security Council Sunday for not being subject to the same IAEA inspections as a non-signatory on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty. The envoy condemned the American attack on Iran, and said that “accepting the recent U.S. actions would undermine all the progress the international community has made in the field of nuclear non-proliferation,” according to the Middle East Monitor.