President Donald Trump has announced plans for very special guests to join him for the White House’s July 4 celebration this week: The U.S. bomber pilots who flew the missions that destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities will join Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Monday.
The event will feature a flyover by B-2 Spirit bombers, the same aircraft used to strike Iran’s uranium enrichment sites at Fordo and Natanz earlier this month in an operation ordered by President Trump. Additional personnel from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the bombers are based, will also attend the event.
“President Trump looks forward to celebrating our nation’s founding on Friday in the nation’s capital. To join in the celebration, the might of America’s Air Force will conduct a flyover featuring our state-of-the-art F-22s, B-2s, and F-35s – the same air capabilities used for the decisive and successful strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump first announced the pilots would be invited to the White House during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” last weekend. The pilots are “going to come to the White House,” Trump announced in the interview.
The operation, dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” involved seven B-2 bombers that participated in strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities. The Pentagon said the aircraft flew continuously for a 36-hour round trip from Missouri to Iran and back, requiring multiple mid-air refueling missions and assistance from fighter jets.
The B-2s dropped 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on the underground nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordo and Natanz, while submarines launched cruise missiles at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear site. Separately, another group of B-2s flew over the Pacific to act as decoys.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine said the bombers went undetected, which was “part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise.”
The strikes came after days of Israeli bombardment of Iranian targets that softened up the Islamic dictatorship’s anti-air defenses. Trump has described the operation as an unqualified success, saying key Iranian nuclear facilities were “obliterated” in the strikes.
The exact scope of the damage remains unclear and has become a source of internal government dispute. One leaked preliminary intelligence report claimed the nuclear program may have been set back by less than a year, but Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have pushed back on those findings.
Trump and Hegseth have said reports indicate the strikes set the Iranian nuclear program back years or decades, and Trump argued that the leaks demeaned the bomber pilots who flew the mission.
“You should be praising those people. … you’re hurting those people,” Trump said last week at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands.
Hegseth also held a news conference last week defending the mission’s success. He said the pilots were “undermined because your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn’t successful.”
Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed Iran’s nuclear capabilities faced “severe damage,” but not “total damage,” in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
The July 4 celebration will serve as both a patriotic holiday event and a showcase of American military capabilities, highlighting the same aircraft and personnel involved in the recent Iran operation. The flyover will feature F-22s, B-2s, and F-35s alongside remarks from President Trump.