11 days in June: Trump's path to 'yes' on bombing Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than a week, President Donald Trump kept the world wondering whether he would join Israel’s attacks on Iran in an attempt to decapitate the country’s nuclear program. The guessing ended this weekend, when American stealth bombers, fighter jets and a submarine struck with bombs and missiles.

Trump’s decision marks one of the riskiest foreign policy decisions by a U.S. president in recent memory, potentially plunging the nation back into armed conflict in the Middle East with no clear endgame.

Like most of Trump’s presidency, the path to military action was unconventional and played out on social media, as he alternatively pledged diplomacy, demanded the evacuation of Tehran, threatened the ayatollah and ultimately announced the U.S. strike.

Here’s a look at how the last 11 days unfolded, a cascade of events that could reshape a combustible corner of the globe. All dates below are in Eastern time.

The first sign that conflict could be on the horizon came when families of U.S. troops began leaving the Middle East. “They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for opening night of “Les Misérables,” one of his favorite musicals.

It wasn't clear whether Israel was preparing to strike, fulfilling years of threats to attack Iran’s nuclear program, or if the movements were a feint to increase pressure for negotiations. The next round of talks between Washington and Tehran was just days away, and Trump was adamant about reaching a diplomatic solution.

Behind the scenes, the Israeli military operation was already taking shape.

Trump said an attack by Israel “could very well happen.” But Iran still seemed to be taken by surprise. Around 8 p.m. in Washington, explosions in Tehran killed top military leaders and scientists. Multiple sites connected to Iran’s nuclear program were also hit.

Israel said 200 warplanes took part in the first wave of attacks. More damage was done with drones that Israeli spies had smuggled into the country, destroying air defenses and missile launchers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as a “targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.” Although Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes, Israeli leaders claimed it was an imminent threat.

Trump posted on social media that “we remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution,” but his tone would soon change.

Iran retaliated against Israel with missiles and drones, many of which were shot down by air defenses. As Trump started his day in Washington, he seemed impressed by Israeli military prowess and his tone became more aggressive toward Iran.

“The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it,” he wrote on social media.

But Trump suggested that diplomacy was his first choice, and urged Iran to make a deal. “Now they have, perhaps, a second chance” to get it done, he said.

Trump talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the morning, and they discussed the conflict between Israel and Iran. The next round of talks between the U.S. and Iran was canceled.

As Israel and Iran continued to trade strikes, Trump attended a military parade in Washington. It was the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, as well as his 79th birthday.

The muscular display of American military might — tanks, troops, paratroopers and a 21-gun salute — played out in the nation's capital as the potential for a new conflict loomed.

Trump spent the day talking up his reputation as a peacemaker, encouraging Iran and Israel to “make a deal” similar to how he had brokered an end to fighting between India and Pakistan.

“Many calls and meetings now taking place,” Trump wrote on social media. “I do a lot, and never get credit for anything, but that’s OK, the PEOPLE understand. MAKE THE MIDDLE EAST GREAT AGAIN!”

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114687664442020232

Iran’s health ministry said 224 people had been killed by Israeli strikes at this point in the conflict. Reports also emerged that Trump had rejected an Israeli plan to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. U.S. officials viewed the idea as dangerously destabilizing.

Trump flew to Canada for the annual Group of Seven summit, which gathers the world’s most powerful democracies. He would not be there long.

Israel claimed it had achieved “aerial superiority” over Tehran, allowing its warplanes to operate freely in the skies above Iran’s capital. One of the strikes hit Iran’s state-run television, abruptly stopping a live broadcast. Netanyahu said Israeli strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program a “very, very long time.”

However, the extent of the damage was unclear, and U.S. and Israeli officials believed only American planes with specially designed “bunker buster” bombs had the capability to destroy nuclear sites buried deep underground.

After a single day at the G7 summit, the White House abruptly announced that Trump would leave early on a red-eye flight to Washington to meet with his national security team.

Trump demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” in a post on social media and he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he wanted “a real end” to the conflict, not just a ceasefire.

He expressed frustration with Iranian leaders for failing to reach an agreement. “They should have done the deal. I told them, ‘Do the deal,’” he said. “So I don’t know. I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate.”

Trump also brushed off assessments from U.S. spy agencies that Iran hadn’t decided to build a nuclear weapon. He insisted they were “very close.”

The sun had not yet risen when Trump arrived at the White House. He took part in a meeting in the Situation Room, but did not appear publicly.

With little clarity on next steps, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters that "I’m here to take questions, not necessarily answer them.”

By this point, there was no question that Trump was considering joining Israel’s attacks on Iran. “I may do it, I may not do it,” he said that morning. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

The president spoke to reporters while overseeing the installation of a massive new flagpole on the South Lawn of the White House, toggling back and forth between chatting up construction workers in hard hats and sizing up the Iranian nuclear threat.

Later, in the Oval Office, Trump again suggested that the U.S. might get directly involved to thwart Iran’s atomic ambitions. “I’m not looking to fight,” he said. “But if it’s a choice between fighting and having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do.”

On Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers the Pentagon was presenting Trump with military options.

It was a federal holiday — Juneteenth — and much of Washington took the hot, steamy day off, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt scheduled a briefing nonetheless.

She entered the briefing room to deliver a message from the president: He would decide within two weeks whether to become directly involved in Israel’s war on Iran.

Trump has long been known to toss out “two week” deadlines for actions that never materialize, so the statement left people guessing on his next move.

Trump convened another meeting of his national security advisers and then flew to his golf club in New Jersey, where he attended a political fundraiser in the evening. He talked to reporters briefly en route, long enough to say his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was “wrong” when she previously said that the U.S. believed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.

Around midnight, the U.S. military operation began in secret: B-2 stealth bombers taking off from a base in Missouri. They headed east, over the Atlantic Ocean, refueling from airborne tankers along the way. It would take them 18 hours to reach Iran. A decoy flight went west, toward the Pacific.

Trump returned to the White House from New Jersey around 6 p.m. Less than an hour later, American ordinance began exploding in Tehran.

More than two dozen Tomahawk missiles were fired from a U.S. submarine. Fighter jets scanned for Iranian interceptors. The stealth bombers dropped 14 bunker buster bombs, marking the first time that the 30,000-pound weapon had been used in combat.

Trump announced the strikes on social media, saying it was a “very successful attack and “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” In a brief national address from the White House, the president threatened to attack Iran again if there was any retaliation.

“There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,” he said.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement during a visit to the site of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which was hit by missiles fired from Iran, in the central city of Rehovot on Friday, June 20, 2025. (Jack Guez/Pool Photo via AP)

A B-2 bomber arrives at Whiteman Air Force Base Mo., Sunday, June 22, 2025. (AP Photo/David Smith)

In this image provided by the White House, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, sit in the Situation Room, Saturday, June 21, 2025, at the White House in Washington. (The White House via AP)

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive to view opening night of "Les Miserables," at the Kennedy Center, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump watch fireworks following a parade to honor the Army's 250th anniversary, coinciding with Trump's 79th birthday, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 21, 2025, after the U.S. military struck three Iranian nuclear and military sites, directly joining Israel's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear program, as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen. (Carlos Barria/Pool via AP)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A man who is suspected of killing two and wounding several others at Brown University has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility where he had rented a unit, officials said.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said at a news conference. Perez said as far as investigators know, the suspect acted alone.

Investigators believe Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was fatally shot in his Brookline home Monday, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Authorities have not formally confirmed a connection between the two shootings.

The official could not publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000. “He has no current affiliation with the university," she said.

Two people were killed and nine were wounded in the mass shooting Saturday at Brown University. The investigation had shifted Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown mass shooting and an attack two days later near Boston that killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro.

The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the cases.

A second individual who was identified in proximity to the suspect came forward after Wednesday’s press conference and helped “blow the lid” off the case, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.

“When you crack it, you crack it. That person led us to the car, led us to the name," Neronha said.

Neronha said there are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Frustration had mounted in Providence that the person behind the attack managed to get away and that a clear image of their face hadn’t emerged.

Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.

In such targeted and highly public attacks, the shooters typically kill themselves or are killed or arrested by police, said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent and expert on mass shootings. When they do get away, searches can take time.

In the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, it took investigators four days to catch up to the two brothers who carried it out. In a 2023 case, Army reservist Robert Card was found dead of an apparent suicide two days after he killed 18 people and wounded 13 others in Lewiston, Maine.

The man accused of killing conservative political figure Charlie Kirk in September turned himself in about a day and a half after the attack on Utah Valley University's campus. And Luigi Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year, was arrested five days later at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania.

Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT's largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.

He grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, the university said.

“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.

Loureiro had said he hoped his work would shape the future.

“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”

This story was updated to delete a reference to MIT being an Ivy League school.

Richer and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.

People gather outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

Law enforcement officers are seen outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

Law enforcement officers search the area for the Brown University shooting suspect, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

A pedestrian walks along Brown University's campus on Thayer St. in Providence, R.I., Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)

This image taken from video provided by the FBI shows a person of interest in the investigation of the shooting that occurred at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI via AP)

A poster seeking information about the campus shooting suspect is seen on the campus of Brown University, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A woman lights a candle at a memorial set up in front of the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, RI, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)

A Brown University student walks past a church on the Providence, RI, campus, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)