Israeli officials and a senior American official have told The New York Times that the US bombing of Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site didn’t destroy the facility despite President Trump’s pronouncement that the attack “completely and totally obliterated” the nuclear facilities that were targeted.
Two Israeli officials told the paper that the Israeli military’s initial assessment, which is based mainly on satellite images, was that the strikes seriously damaged Fordow but didn’t completely destroy it. They said it appeared that Iran had evacuated the facility and removed enriched uranium, which aligns with a statement from Tehran.
The senior US official also said the bombing didn’t destroy Fordow but insisted the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The official added that not even 12 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs could have destroyed Fordow.
Before the attack, reports said that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) said in a briefing to officials that in order to destroy Fordow, the US would likely have to drop a tactical nuclear weapon after softening the ground with conventional bombs.
The US military said that in the attack on Fordow and two other nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan, US B-2 bombers dropped 14 30,000-pound bunker-busters, known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs. Each B-2 can carry two MOPs, suggesting seven bombers were involved in the attack.
The US military, which dubbed the attack “Operation Midnight Hammer,” said a total of 125 aircraft were involved in the bombing and that the aircraft fired a total of 75 guided munitions at two of the sites. US Navy submarines also fired Tomahawk missiles at a third site.
The official line from the Trump administration is that the three nuclear sites that it targeted suffered “severe damage and destruction” but a final assessment is still being made. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said that Tehran was still “calculating the damages.”
Iran said that it also evacuated the sites at Natanz and Isfahan and removed nuclear material. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that it did not detect any radiation in the area following the US attacks. “Following attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran… the IAEA can confirm that no increase in off-site radiation levels has been reported as of this time,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israel have attacked Iran’s nuclear sites under the pretext of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. But before Israel launched its war, US intelligence had no evidence that Iran was working toward a bomb, and claims to the contrary came from Israel’s Mossad.
