U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Sunday that despite a surprise attack overnight on Iranian nuclear sites, America “does not seek war.”

Hegseth said it was important to note that U.S. strikes did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people, a veiled effort to indicate to Iran that they don’t want retaliation on American targets in the region.

Hegseth said that a choice to move a number of B-2 bombers from their base in Missouri earlier Saturday was meant to be a decoy to throw off Iranians.

He added that the U.S. used other methods of deception as well, deploying fighters to protect the B-2 bombers that dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s most powerful nuclear site. He said that all of these tactics helped the U.S. drop the bombs without tipping off Iran’s fighter jets or its air missile systems.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed that the goal of “Operation Midnight Hammer” had destroyed the nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

“Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Caine said.

As the U.S. and the region await Iran’s response to the overnight strikes, Hegseth said that military generals have elevated force protection measures across the region, especially in Iraq, Syria, and the Persian Gulf.

“Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice,” Hegseth told reporters.

“I can only confirm that there are both public and private messages being directly delivered to the Iranians in multiple channels, giving them every opportunity to come to the table,” Hegseth said.

A Mideast-based maritime center overseen by the U.S. military warned Sunday that there’s a “high” risk to U.S.-associated ships after the American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

“The threat to U.S.-associated commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is currently assessed as HIGH,” the Joint Maritime Information Center, which is overseen by the U.S. Navy, wrote in an advisory to shippers.

“This categorization follows U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and Houthi rhetoric directly targeting the U.S.-associated maritime assets,” it said. Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saturday said they would attack U.S.-associated ships if America attacked Iran.

A Pentagon-provided map of the flight path taken by B-2 stealth bombers indicates that their approach to Iran took them over the Mediterranean and then over Israel, Jordan and Iraq.

It is not immediately clear when those three countries were made aware of the flights. Israel has said the U.S. strikes were carried out in coordination with its military. The U.S. said the strikes did not involve Israeli jets.

The Pentagon released the map to journalists as it gave details of the mission, which it described as causing “extremely severe damage and destruction” to three Iranian nuclear sites.

Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Israel was still assessing damage.

At a press briefing, Defrin was asked whether enriched material had been removed from the Fordo site before the U.S. strike, and he replied that it was too early to know. Defrin said the strikes were carried out in coordination with the Israeli military.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday condemned the U.S. attacks.

“This aggression showed that the United States is the primary instigator of the Zionist regime’s hostile actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pezeshkian said Sunday. “Although they initially tried to deny their role, after our armed forces’ decisive and deterrent response and the Zionist regime’s clear incapacity, they were inevitably forced to enter the field themselves.”

Pezeshkian urged the public to come together in the face of the attacks from Israel and the U.S.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday “strongly condemned” U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling them “a gross violation of international law, the U.N. Charter, and U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

In its statement on Telegram, the ministry warned of potential “radiological” consequences and said the strikes marked “a dangerous escalation … fraught with further undermining of regional and global security.”

Araghchi said that there is “no red line” that the U.S. has not crossed in its recent actions against the Islamic Republic.

“And the last one and the most dangerous one was what happened only last night when they crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities only,” he said.

Araghchi, responding to a question from a Russian outlet, said he’ll travel to Moscow later on Sunday to meet with President Vladimir Putin, after the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear sites.

“We enjoy a strategic partnership and we always consult with each other and coordinate our positions,” he said, referring to Russia.