Eurasia Press & News
New satellite imagery reveals damage at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran after US military aircraft bombed the site.
In the images, which were captured on Sunday by the US commercial satellite imaging company Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider, several large holes or craters can be seen on a ridge over the underground complex at Fordow, south of Tehran.
The images show what looks like a layer of dust or debris caused by the US airstrikes over the area, and several tunnel entrances that lead to the underground facility appear to be blocked with dirt.
President Donald Trump shared early Sunday morning (local time in Iran) that the US had attacked Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities in what he later described as a “spectacular military success.”
He said US aircraft dropped a “full payload” of bombs on Fordow, one of Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities. The site is buried deep in the side of a mountain and is the country’s most hardened facility, designed specifically to be protected from air attacks. And that makes it difficult to assess internal damage at the facility. Satellite images reveal only surface-level damage.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropped a total of 14 heavy bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He described the operation, known as Midnight Hammer, as highly secretive and complex.
Speaking with reporters early on Sunday, Caine said the B-2s dropped the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, which is the US military’s largest non-nuclear bomb and believed to be the only weapon that’s capable of penetrating Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities such as Fordow.
It marked the first-ever operational use of the MOP, Caine added. Several of these bombs were dropped on Fordow. It’s unclear, however, how much damage the underground facility sustained.
During a press conference, Caine said that more than 125 US aircraft — a mix of the B-2s, fourth- and fifth-generation fighter jets, and aerial refueling tankers — were involved in the operation, which consisted of a considerable amount of deception.
He said American forces used 75 precision-guided weapons against Iranian targets, including the 14 MOPs and more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a submarine in an undisclosed location in the Middle East.
Caine said that the battle damage assessment would take some time but that initial indications were that all three Iranian nuclear sites that were struck sustained damage and destruction.
Additional satellite imagery captured by Maxar on Sunday and obtained by BI revealed the aftermath of the US strikes at Natanz and Isfahan, the other two nuclear facilities that officials named. Both sites are south of Tehran in the center of the country.
The dozens of submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles targeted key infrastructure at Isfahan, with imagery showing that the site sustained heavy damage in the strikes.
Rafael Grossi, the United Nations nuclear watchdog chief, said there was extensive damage at Isfahan. He added that Iranian authorities had reported no increase in off-site radiation levels following the US strikes on the three nuclear sites.
The US bombing came after a week of sweeping Israeli airstrikes across Iran that officials said were intended to degrade the country’s nuclear program and military capabilities. Trump, who had long pushed Tehran to agree to a new nuclear deal, had spent the past few days weighing whether to join Israel in its campaign.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has preferred a military solution to Iran’s nuclear program, praised Trump for attacking the Iranian nuclear sites.
Since June 13, Israeli fighter jets have targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, top scientists, senior commanders, missile launchers, air defenses, bases, warplanes, weapons production facilities, and other high-profile military infrastructure.
Iran has retaliated by launching hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, many of which have been intercepted.
The US bombing is a major escalation in the conflict that could see Iran retaliate by targeting American forces, as Tehran has threatened to do. The Pentagon has a large presence in the Middle East, consisting of warships, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and ground troops.
Both Trump and Pentagon leadership have called for peace, warning Iran it could see more strikes if that can’t be achieved.
