WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump in recent weeks directed the Pentagon to give him military options for destroying Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as the president, frustrated with pace of negotiations, leaned into taking action.

Trump has said his foreign policy is about ending wars, not starting new ones, and he had believed he could cut a deal with Tehran — replacing the nuclear deal agreed to in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, which Trump ended in 2018 — that would end Iran’s path to creating a nuclear weapon.

But by last month, Trump had begun to decide that talks were not progressing in a way that gave the Iranians credibility, Vice President JD Vance told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“I think that he decided probably by mid-May that this process was not going anywhere, and so he decided to issue some private ultimatums to the Iranians,” Vance said. “And then eventually, of course, we decided to destroy the Fordo nuclear facility, and some of these other facilities, ourselves.”

Last week, Trump had all but decided to go forward on the military plans presented to him. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, had briefed him on a range of options for Iran earlier this month at Camp David, the secluded presidential retreat in Maryland. One option was not to get involved at all. But at some point after that briefing Trump started leaning toward taking military action.

It was only in the final days leading up to the strike that those plans grew more refined. Trump ultimately chose an option to use B2 Spirit stealth bombers, the only platform capable of carrying the largest bunker buster bombs in the U.S. arsenal, the 30,000-pound GBU-57 known as a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, and drop them on nuclear sites in central Iran.

That bomb had never before been used in combat, but it was key to the operation, and to at least part of the rationale for the U.S. taking action. One of Iran’s most important nuclear sites, at Fordo, is built inside a mountain and has been believed to be protected from any bomb with the sole exception of the GBU-57. And though Israel does possess smaller bunker busters provided by the U.S., it is not believed to have either the GBU-57 or any plane capable of delivering it.

Few people inside the administration knew that Trump was moving forward with the plan, administration officials said publicly after the strikes, especially after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Thursday that the president had decided he would give Iran up to two weeks to agree to a nuclear deal.

The president has developed a reputation for changing his mind on military operations or other policy moves, even at the last minute. By telegraphing to Iran, the world and even the American public that he was content with giving Iran two more weeks, he gave himself some measure of political protection in case he wanted to change his mind just before the operation began.

According to a senior White House official, at the time Leavitt released the statement, Trump had not yet made a final decision, but “his instincts were to move forward.”

Even as the Pentagon was preparing for the strikes, the president was continuing to pursue diplomacy, mainly through his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. As he weighed how to move forward, Trump was briefed daily on Israeli operations and the U.S.’s own military options.

On Friday, the day after Leavitt released the statement from him about giving Iran two weeks, Trump ordered the military plans to move forward, though he did not yet give the final go order. The operation was given a name, Midnight Hammer, and the Pentagon began to put the pieces into place.

Covert movements

Some B2s were flown towards the Pacific as part of a diversionary tactic and a submarine that would also play a role, firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at one of the nuclear sites, was pre-positioned. U.S. Navy ships were prepared to continue with the kind of defensive operations they have been conducting since Israel began its campaign against Iran earlier this month.

“This was a highly classified mission, with very few people in Washington knowing the timing or nature of this plan,” Caine said during a briefing at the Pentagon Sunday morning.

Also on Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged that the bulk of U.S. military forces deployed to the region were also not informed of the impending mission. Defense officials said forces in the region are now on high alert. On Monday, Iran said it had launched a missile strike against a U.S. base in Qatar.

As the operation approached, advisers checked and double checked whether Trump still planned to move ahead with the strikes. On Saturday morning, Hegseth called Trump, who was at his golf course in Bedminster New Jersey, to confirm that the operation was still a go, and Trump informed the secretary that the Pentagon should move forward.

Later Saturday, as Trump was flying on Marine One to an airport in New Jersey for his trip back to Washington, D.C., to meet with his national security team, Hegseth called again to get the president’s final approval, a White House official told NBC News, confirming a detail first reported in The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. Trump told him the strikes were a go, the official said.

When Trump arrived back in Washington, he immediately went to the Situation Room to monitor the mission with his top advisers, including Vance, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Caine, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Hegseth.

Soon after, the first bombs began to drop, at about 6:40 pm Washington time, or 2:10 am Iranian time. The lead B2 dropped two GBU-57s at Fordo, the primary target of the mission, according to Pentagon officials. The bombers behind it then dropped their bombs, ultimately unleashing a total of 14 GBU-57s bombs on two of the nuclear sites, Fordo and Natanz. The submarine then launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at the third site, known as Isfahan.

The operation was by most accounts a smoothly executed one in which no American was killed or injured and the known targets were all hit. The Pentagon used more than 125 aircraft in total, launching about 75 total weapons.

Trump and Hegseth were quick to declare the mission a success. Trump posted on Truth Social that it was a “very successful attack.” Hegseth on Sunday said that Trump had delivered “the final blow” to Iran’s nuclear program.

But the final assessment of what the U.S. accomplished in Iran will take days or even weeks.