From Somalia to Iran, from Yemen to Venezuela: here are all the military operations authorized by Donald Trump between pacifist rhetoric and global interventionism
Commit to peace in Gaza and Ukraine, but do not hold back when it comes to intervening militarily in other hot areas of the planet. This seems to be the line held by Donald Trump that we can observe in the year of the mid-term elections of his second presidency. During the first year of his second term, he authorized a series of attacks ranging from the unprecedented use of bunker bombs against Iran’s most fortified nuclear sites to a sustained anti-drug campaign off the coast of Venezuela. Although he calls himself a “president of peace”, he defines what he is applying as a strategy of “peace through strength”. At his inauguration he declared: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end and, perhaps more importantly, by the wars we will never participate in.” Adding that his would be a “legacy of which he will be most proud, that of a peacemaker and unifier”. It is not just a question of algebraic sums on the number of armed operations he authorized, but of the fact that his predecessors did not declare them openly to the press.
From Somalia to Iraq: the fight against ISIS
What is certain, however, is what already happened on February 1, 2025 in Somalia, when US forces eliminated an armed cell of the Islamic State to reduce ISIS’s ability to plan and conduct terrorist attacks that threaten “US citizens, allies and even innocent civilians”. The attacks lasted a few days and led to the destruction of training camps located in East Africa. Two months later, on March 13, a U.S.-led coalition attack in Iraq’s Anbar province led to the killing of ISIS’s second leader, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, and another rebel traveling with him. The Iraqi Prime Minister described al-Rifai as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and in the world”, alluding to his ability to coordinate the formation and deployment of new cells.
Yemen and the Red Sea: the campaign against the Houthis
Not two days later, with operations lasting until May 6, the Trump administration launched an air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. According to the Pentagon, the attacks targeted command and control centers, air defense systems and facilities used for the production and storage of advanced weapons. It was the hottest moment for attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea and these operations revealed the need to have anti-drone systems that cost less than the missiles used, which in turn were a hundred times more expensive than the drones they shot down. The offensive, which used long-range cruise missiles and Tomahawk missiles, cost more than $1 billion in the first month alone. And it was only thanks to the mediation of Oman that the Houthis ceased fire.
Operation Midnight Hammer: the attack on Iranian nuclear sites
In the second half of June 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer began, which saw the mission of seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Base, Missouri, to strike the deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities. Spirits dropped 10-ton GBU-57 shells on the uranium enrichment sites of Fordo and Natanz, while a submarine off the Arabian Peninsula launched a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles on Isfahan. On the evening of June 22, Donald Trump declared that the mission had caused the total destruction of Iran’s enrichment capabilities, although the Tehran regime later denied this. The fact remains that according to the Pentagon, Iran will not be able to recover the conditions before the attack before 2027.
Venezuela, Syria and Nigeria: the global offensive
From September 2 to today in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, the U.S. military has conducted a sustained campaign of lethal maritime attacks to dismantle powerful Venezuelan drug cartels and stop the flow of narcotics to the United States. Trump claims that the deployment involves the “largest army ever deployed in the history of South America”, also promising to increase it if necessary. To date, the number of suspected traffickers killed in the raids is 106 people.
Last December 19, with Operation Hawkeye Strike, a campaign was launched to avenge the deaths of two US soldiers, Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard and Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, and that of a US civilian interpreter, Ayad Mansoor Sakat, killed in a terrorist attack in Syria. An attack group composed of fighter planes, attack helicopters and artillery launchers has hit more than 70 alleged ISIS targets in the central part of the country, at least according to what was released by Centcom.
Finally, on Christmas Day, Trump announced that the United States had carried out some airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria, acting to protect Christians who were being massacred by radical Islamists. Again the mission saw the launch of a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea and was coordinated with the Nigerian Army. Meanwhile, according to Centcom, the CIA carried out a drone attack on a facility in Venezuela, thus carrying out the first US attack inside the country since the Trump administration intensified its pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government. According to CNN, the mission targeted a pier along the Venezuelan coast that authorities say was used by the Venezuelan Tren De Aragua gang to store narcotics and potentially prepare them for shipment.
