‘Extraordinary and unprecedented’: The media reaction to Trump’s Iran attack

Stunning news broke Saturday night when it was learned the United States, under the orders of President Donald Trump, bombed three sites in Iran in an effort to dismantle that country’s nuclear program.

In an address to the nation on Saturday night, Trump called the attacks a “spectacular military success,” adding, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

Trump also said, “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left.”

In a Sunday press conference, his first as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth seemed to send a warning to Iran by saying the U.S. military’s power was “nearly unlimited.” However, he also tried to send a message to the many Americans, including a good portion of the MAGA crowd, who are worried about the U.S. getting involved in a prolonged war in the Middle East.

Hegseth said, “The scope of this was intentionally limited.”

It’s a move that few thought would actually happen, at least at this time. And it’s a move that many Americans did not want. Just last week, The Washington Post polled 1,000 Americans and asked if they would support the U.S. launching airstrikes against Iran over its nuclear program. The results: 45% said no, 25% said yes and 30% were unsure.

Among Republicans, less than half (47%) said yes, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats (67%) said no, they would not support such a move.

So, what has been some of the media reaction?

Nahal Toosi, Politico’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, wrote, “Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites this weekend is the latest sign that he’s now in a phase where he’s willing to take enormous risks with little concern about the blowback. He has survived so much already — two impeachments, criminal convictions, two assassination attempts. He doesn’t have to run for office again, and, as has been amply noted, his advisers won’t restrain him the way they did in his first term.”

Toosi added, “If Trump’s hope for a one-and-done strike devolves into an endless tit-for-tat, he will have led the U.S. into the very type of war he’s long promised to avoid. So much for the ‘isolationist.”

In an analysis piece for The Washington Post, Dan Balz wrote, “President Donald Trump has taken the United States to a place no previous president was prepared to go — launching an all-out assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities with the goal of denying the Iranians the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. Having started down this path, the president — and the world — will await the Iranian response and whatever wider consequences follow. There is no way to overstate the significance of what Trump has set in motion or to predict how it will end. The attack, both extraordinary and unprecedented, represents a watershed moment in the history of the Middle East.”

David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times who has covered efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear program for more than 20 years, wrote that after two decades of the U.S. sanctions, sabotage, cyberattacks and diplomatic negotiations to try to slow Iran’s attempt at nuclear weapon capabilities, Trump “unleashed a show of raw military might that each of his last four predecessors had deliberately avoided, for fear of plunging the United States into war in the Middle East.”

Sanger added that Trump is betting the U.S. can withstand or stop any retaliation attempts made by Iran. And, he wrote, “Most importantly, he is betting that he has destroyed Iran’s chances of ever reconstituting its nuclear program. That is an ambitious goal: Iran has made clear that, if attacked, it would exit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and take its vast program underground.”

The result of that? Sanger later writes, “Iran could slowly recover, its surviving nuclear scientists could take their skills underground and the country could follow the pathway lit by North Korea, with a race to build a bomb. Today, North Korea has 60 or more nuclear weapons by some intelligence estimates, an arsenal that probably makes it too powerful to attack. That, Iran may conclude, is the only pathway to keep larger, hostile powers at bay, and to prevent the United States and Israel from carrying out an operation like the one that lit up the Iranian skies on Sunday morning.”

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Right move, wrong team

That was the headline on a piece by The Atlantic's David Frum.

Frum wrote, “Striking Iran at this time and under these circumstances was the right decision by an administration and president that usually make the wrong one. An American president who does not believe in democracy at home has delivered an overwhelming blow in defense of a threatened democracy overseas. If a single night’s action successfully terminates Donald Trump’s Iran war, and permanently ends the Iran nuclear-bomb program, then Trump will have retroactively earned the birthday parade he gave himself on June 14. If not, this unilateral war under a president with dictatorial ambitions may lead the United States to some dark and repressive places.”

But there’s also another side to all of this, which Frum completely nails.

He wrote, “Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism, and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation. Trump has not put U.S. boots on the ground to fight Iran, but he has put U.S. troops on the ground for an uninvited military occupation of California.”

Meet the warning

Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was highly critical of Trump on Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, saying, “I find it interesting that the person without combat experience is often the first person to want to drop a bomb. And that’s what we see here. And what we did last night puts those troops, 40,000 of them, at further risk. But we are going to do everything we can to protect that. Now, we’ve got a very capable military. We’re going to do our best to defend our interests.”

Kelly, the former astronaut and Navy veteran, was referring to 40,000 American troops stationed in the Middle East.

Kelly added, “I think folks here at home as well are at greater risk. We could have, we could see terrorist attacks here. The Iranians still have a lot of proxies. They could go after us. The escalatory factor of this action that was taken (Saturday) is significant.”

Among the other possible threats are cyberattacks. The Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory on Sunday saying attacks from low-level cyber “hacktivists” are likely.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance appeared on “Meet the Press” and told moderator Kristen Welker that the United States is not at war with Iran. Vance said, “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”

OK, so that makes no sense. But let’s move on.

Welker asked Vance, “Do you have 100% confidence that Iran's nuclear sites were totally destroyed?"

Vance answered, “I’m not going to get into sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground there in Iran, but we’ve seen a lot, and I feel very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon, and that was the goal of this attack.”

Vance would separately add that the U.S. “destroyed the Iranian nuclear program,” adding, “I think we set that program back substantially.”

More notable pieces and reactions regarding the US attacks on Iran

 

• Speaking on MSNBC, host Rachel Maddow said, “There have been factions within U.S. politics who have advocated for the United States to go to war with Iran for decades. President Trump is generally politically credited with standing in opposition to those kinds of factions in U.S. politics. But he has now made their dreams come true without really making a case to the U.S. public that there is a need to urgently act right now, to have done this — and that has a few different consequences.”
• The Wall Street Journal’s Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Siobhan Hughes and Alex Leary with “Aboard Marine One, a Phone Call and the Decision to Strike Iran.”
• PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson with “Did Trump violate War Powers Act by bombing Iran nuclear sites?”
• Semafor White House correspondent Shelby Talcott with “White House braces for ‘escalatory’ Iranian retaliation.”
• The New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman with “How the Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle.”
• In a supportive piece, The Wall Street Journal editorial board with “Trump Meets the Moment on Iran.” The Journal board wrote, “Credit goes to him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. But Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.”
• Excellent reporting here from Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, a go-to reporter on stories such as these.
• The Hill’s Ian Swanson with “Trump hits Iran: 5 questions on what comes next.”
• Mediaite’s Joe DePaolo with “‘Irrelevant!’ Rubio Battles CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Iran’s Nuclear Capability in Heated Debate.”
• The regular Fox network broke away from Saturday night’s Major League Baseball game of the week (Mets vs. Phillies) to carry Trump’s brief national address. They shipped the game over to Fox Sports 1. Most Fox stations returned to the game after Trump spoke, but not all. Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz has more in “Dallas Fox affiliate never returned to Mets-Phillies following Trump speech.”

Sad news

Scott Miller, one of the most respected and well-liked baseball reporters, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 62.

Miller spent more than 30 years covering Major League Baseball, starting in 1994 when he began covering the Minnesota Twins for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He went on to work for the Los Angeles Times, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and contributed to The New York Times. He also worked for MLB Radio and wrote two books about baseball.

Major League Baseball put out a statement saying, “Tonight we remember Scott Miller – a true gentleman, a class act, and an expert of his craft who loved our National Pastime. We extend our deepest condolences to his loved ones and his readers throughout the game.”

Longtime USA Today columnist Bob Nightengale wrote on X, “Baseball lost a giant,” and he called Miller “a brilliant writer and an even better human. His gift for storytelling embodied his kind soul and heart.”

Awful Announcing’s Michael Dixon has a collection of the tributes that poured in for Miller.

Media tidbits

• ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis has the first broadcast interview with Mahmoud Khalil, the legal U.S. resident who was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Davis asks Khalil about his more than 100 days in immigration detention, the reunion with his family, and what message he has for President Trump. Portions of the interview will air and stream across ABC News programs and platforms, including this morning's "Good Morning America.” The full interview will air at 7 p.m. Eastern tonight on ABC News Live, ABC's steaming platform.
• Meanwhile, here’s The New York Times’ Jonah E. Bromwich with the very first interview with Khalil in “‘It Felt Like Kidnapping,’ Khalil Says in First Interview Since Release.”
• Poynter’s Sophie Endrud with “The Democratic Party’s latest messaging strategy? A daily YouTube news show.”
• For The Atlantic, Franklin Schneider with “I See Your Smartphone-Addicted Life.”
• Allysia Finley, a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, with “AI’s Biggest Threat: Young People Who Can’t Think.”
• Speaking of AI, be sure to check out the latest episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast.” My guest is Alex Mahadevan, director of Poynter’s MediaWise and a Poynter faculty member who specializes in AI. We talk about AI and journalism in a conversation that will be interesting to both journalists and nonjournalists.

Hot type

• From The New York Times, Eli Saslow (with visuals by Erin Schaff) with “‘I Feel Like I’ve Been Lied To’: When a Measles Outbreak Hits Home.”
• “CBS News Sunday Morning” and correspondent Anthony Mason talk with John Densmore and Robby Krieger, the surviving members of the rock band The Doors, for “‘Break on Through’:  How The Doors began.”

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