President Donald Trump oversaw the start of what he called “major combat operations” in Iran from inside Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate that has become a familiar crucible of high-stakes, top-secret activity that results in missiles launched, leaders deposed, generals assassinated and rebel groups battered with missiles.
Trump was joined in Palm Beach by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spent many hours over the last several weeks going over options for Iran with the president.
The group used a secure room on the estate to monitor the launch of what Trump described as a “massive” campaign in Iran, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The list of highly classified operations green-lit from Mar-a-Lago is now a long one.
It was in a windowless basement room that Trump met with top national security officials in 2020 to make a final decision on taking out Iran’s top military commander, Qasem Soleimani.
It was from another secure room that Trump authorized strikes on Syria for the use of chemical weapons in 2017, before returning to dinner with China’s leader to recount them over chocolate cake. “He was eating his cake,” Trump would say later of his guest, President Xi Jinping. “And he was silent.”
In the last year alone, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago as the US began an air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen, observing the first salvos on monitors fresh from the golf course; as American Tomahawk missiles were fired into alleged ISIS camps in Nigeria on Christmas Day; and as the audacious mission to capture Nicolas Maduro played out in Caracas at the start of the year.
