Deception was key weapon in Trump strike against Iran

In the wee hours of Sunday, David Shayani took to his X (Twitter) account to reply to another user who saw flighttracking information for a group of eight American tanker aircraft departing Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri.

- ANDREW FEINBERG

He wrote that he'd seen a total of nine B-2 Spirit bombers passing over his home in Warsaw, Missouri, "headed due east".

Shayani, who describes himself on the social media site as "an average guy" and a veteran of the US Marine Corps, had inadvertently spotted what we now know was part of a grand deception by the Trump administration ahead of what the Pentagon revealed to be called "Operation Midnight Hammer".

The blitz attack on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities was described in limited detail by defence secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday, the former Fox News host and Donald Trump acolyte calling it "an incredible and overwhelming success".

Appearing in the Pentagon briefing room for the first time alongside Joint Chiefs chair General Dan "Razin" Caine, Hegseth said the operation had required "misdirection and the highest of operational security".

That allowed seven of the stealth bombers spotted by Shayani, as well as an untold number of what Caine said had been "fourth and fifth-generation" fighters, to penetrate deep into Iranian airspace and drop a total of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs - bunker-busting weapons designed to take out hardened facilities deep underground - in the first operational use of that weapon.

A multi-day deception

The Independent understands that the "misdirection" revealed by Caine actually began on Wednesday, when Trump decided that he would order use of the 30,000lb weapons against Iran's nuclear sites after meeting with his national security team.

That was also the day he began to ratchet up his rhetoric directed at the Iranian regime by demanding "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" from Tehran in a Truth Social post, just minutes after he issued a thinly veiled threat against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader.