Pentagon Worked Up ‘Ruse’ to Fool Iran on Strikes Because They Feared Trump Would Give It Away on Social Media: NYT

The Pentagon reportedly orchestrated an elaborate decoy mission to keep President Donald Trump from blowing the cover off impending covert strikes on Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure because top military officials feared his social media posts would give away the plan.

Despite Trump publicly claiming he would take “up to two weeks” to decide whether to join Israel’s war effort, preparations for an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities were already in motion.

According to advisers who spoke to The New York Times, Trump was floating the idea of using “massive bunker-buster bombs” on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility just hours after Israeli bombs fell on June 13. Within a day, one adviser told reporters, it was clear: “Trump seemed to have already decided to go through with it.”

But the greatest threat to operational secrecy wasn’t Iran or hackers, sources told the outlet, it was Trump’s social media posts.

In the lead-up to the attack, Trump posted provocatively on Truth Social: “Everyone should evacuate Tehran!” A day later, after leaving a G7 summit in Canada, he wrote he had departed not to negotiate a ceasefire but for something “much bigger.” He added: “Stay tuned!”

Planners inside the the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command were deeply concerned that Tehran would catch wind of the plan, according to The Times, and scrambled to implement a decoy mission.

The outlet detailed how two fleets of B-2 bombers were dispatched from Missouri – one headed west, visible to flight trackers; the other east, crossing the Atlantic silently in the night.

The westbound bombers acted as distraction while the real strike force flew undetected into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time, the lead bomber dropped two bunker-busting bombs on the Fordow site. By the end of the operation, 14 bombs had been dropped.