US-Iran war: Drama and deception

Was it all drama and deception? The world might have just witnessed the shortest global war on record — 12 days, from June 13, 2025 to June 25, 2025.

- TONY LOPEZ

World War I lasted four years, 1914-1918. World War II lasted six years, 1939 to 1945.

The shape of World War III? It just took place, in 12 days, in two countries, Israel and Iran, with the United States in between.

Israel started the war on June 13 by bombing Iran's military and nuclear facilities. Israel killed the members of the inner circle of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top figures in Iran's nuclear brain trust, with bomb-carrying drones that also damaged high rises and other structures in Tehran. Believed killed: Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps; Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iran armed forces, and Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a nuclear physicist. Israel's attack killed at least 400 in Iran, and injured 3,000. The death toll in Israel from Iran's retaliatory strikes: 24.

Early June 22 Sunday morning, Manila time, US President Donald Trump finished what Israel forces could not — deliver the coup de grace on Iran's three major nuclear processing facilities — Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, south of Tehran, the capital, with missiles and bunker buster bombs. Six bunker buster bombs were dropped on Fordo, located 300 feet under a mountain. Trump said Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities were "completely and totally obliterated." Pentagon said the three sites suffered "extremely severe damage and destruction."

Only the US has the 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs needed to damage Fordo. The Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities "were wiped out with 30 Tomahawk missiles launched by American submarines some 400 miles away."