The Trump administration’s successful surprise strikes on Iran on Saturday night were executed without issue after the National Security Council saw massive overhauls earlier in 2025, and the national security advisor was replaced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to fulfill an additional job role that critics said would likely end in failure.
President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement on Truth Social Saturday evening announcing the U.S. military carried out successful strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities as tensions and conflict heightened between Iran and Israel since June 12.
‘A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan,’ Trump said from the White House in an address to the nation just hours after the Truth Social announcement. ‘Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.’
By Monday evening, Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Trump declaring the ’12 Day War’ was over following the U.S. strikes.
The operation, which was also praised by Pentagon brass as a total success, was executed after the Trump administration slashed the National Security Council and replaced former national security advisor Mike Waltz with Rubio, who currently serves four different roles within the administration.
Democratic lawmakers and former National Security Council staffers seethed against potential and finalized cuts to the council, alleging that Trump was politicizing and potentially crippling national security.
The Trump administration and its supporters, however, viewed the overhauls as the president coming through on his campaign promise to strip Washington of the ‘deep state’ and streamline the office.
The National Security Council operates within the White House to advise the president on foreign policy issues.
It is chaired by the president, with other members including the vice president, the secretaries of state, treasury and defense, and the assistant to the president for national security affairs. Other staffers on the council include foreign policy experts who frequently join the team on loan from the Pentagon or State Department.
The Trump administration has made a handful of cuts to the National Security Council since Inauguration Day, most notably trimming roughly half of the National Security Council’s 350-person team in May, Fox Digital previously reported. Waltz, who served as Trump’s national security advisor for roughly 100 days, was removed from the post May 1 and named Trump’s nominee to serve as ambassador to the U.N. following a Signal chat leak with a journalist.
Following Waltz’s departure, Trump named Rubio as his acting national security advisor, and he carried out a massive overhaul to the office, including trimming it of more than 100 staffers ahead of Memorial Day.
‘The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,’ a White House official told Axios in May as Rubio took a hatchet to the NSC staff.
A White House official told Fox Digital on Monday that Rubio’s joint roles have allowed for ‘greater coordination between the State Department and White House,’ which they said has led to ‘more efficient execution of the president’s foreign policy agenda.’
Democrats, however, predicted that Rubio serving simultaneously as chief of the State Department and Trump’s national security advisor, would prove to be a failure. They argued that he would be unable to juggle the high-profiled roles, in addition to serving as acting archivist of the U.S., as well as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
‘There’s no way he can do that and do it well, especially since there’s such incompetence over at DOD with Pete Hegseth being secretary of defense and just the hollowing out of the top leadership,’ Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ last month. ‘There’s no way he can carry all that entire load on his own.’
‘I don’t know how anybody could do these two big jobs,’ Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said Sunday on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’
Fast-forward less than two months; Trump and his national security team executed ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ in Iran, which has received widespread support among Republicans and a handful of Democrats. Historic critics of the president, such as Democrat New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, however, have railed against the operation as bypassing congressional authority.
‘The success of Operation Midnight Hammer speaks to the unmatched capabilities of the United States military, as well as President Trump’s brilliant foreign policy strategy, which included working closely with his national security team to flawlessly execute this mission and obliterate Iran’s ability to possess a nuclear weapon,’ White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Fox Digital on Monday.
‘As usual, Democrats and the legacy media were wrong – President Trump has rightfully placed immense trust in his top officials, including Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hegseth, and Director Gabbard, to help him make the world safer,’ she added.
Trump repeatedly met with the National Security Council and other administration leaders between June 12 and last Saturday, when the strikes were ordered on Iran.
Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance were fixtures of the discussions, with photos showing them criss-crossing in and out of the White House last week as they reported to the Situation Room to meet with the president. The trio of U.S. officials flanked Trump as he addressed the nation about the operation Saturday night.
‘For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America. Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs,’ Trump said in his address Saturday with the trio standing behind him. ‘That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate, in particular.’
‘Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,’ Trump said. ‘And Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.’
The operation itself was cloaked in secrecy and took Iran and the world by surprise. Trump had said on Thursday – via comment from press secretary Karoline Leavitt – that he would make a decision on Iran within two weeks, which signaled a longer time frame than 48 hours for such a mission.
There were no media leaks or speculation that such strikes were imminent, while earlier on Saturday, six B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri were spotted en route to a U.S. Air Force base in Guam, which signaled the U.S. was likely making moves on Iran, but not in just mere hours from when news broke of the stealth bombers. The bombers were later revealed to be decoys.
Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a press conference Sunday from the Pentagon, where they celebrated that strategic deception and misdirection played a key role in the operation.
‘At midnight Friday into Saturday morning, a large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental United States,’ Caine said on Sunday. ‘As part of the plan to maintain tactical surprise, part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy – a deception effort, known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington and in Tampa.’
Hegseth said in his remarks before the media Sunday morning that the U.S. military had leveraged ‘misdirection’ and total secrecy, aside from top national security officials, to carry out the strikes ‘without the world knowing at all.’
‘It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security. Our B-2s went in and out of… these nuclear sites, in and out and back, without the world knowing at all,’ Hegseth said. ‘In that way, it was historic.’
It was the longest B-2 spirit bomber mission since 2001, the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown and the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history, Hegseth and Caine said during the Sunday press conference.
Rubio spoke to the media on Sunday morning shows, telling ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ host Maria Bartiromo that the ‘most important thing’ Iran should realize following the strikes is ‘the game is up’ and it’s time for peace.
‘They have played the world for 40-something years with these nuclear talks and delaying things… they’re not going to play President Trump, and they found out last night that when he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it. And he doesn’t want to do it. It’s not his first choice, but it’s the only choice. That’s the choice the Iranian regime left us, because they play too many games,’ he said.
Trump celebrated on Monday evening in another Truth Social post that Iran and Israel had reached a ceasefire deal and that the 12 Day War had ended.
‘On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR.’ This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!’ he wrote.
Tensions are still flared in the Middle East, as both Israel and Iran accuse each other of violating the ceasefire on Tuesday morning, with Trump urging them to put down their weapons while triumphantly declaring Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been crippled.
‘IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!’ Trump posted on Tuesday morning while heading to a NATO summit at the Hague in the Netherlands.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.