A day after the United States military hit three nuclear facilities in Iran, American officials say that Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities sustained “severe damage and destruction,” but it’s unclear if they were fully taken out of commission.
Operation Midnight Hammer, as Saturday’s military strike was called, was a massive undertaking involving U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and several dozen fighter jets, plus a Navy submarine. According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, 14 GBU-57 bunker buster bombs were used on two sites — the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow and the enrichment installation at Natanz — while the Navy fired Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles at the research and conversion site in Isfahan. All American aircraft and personnel safely returned from Iranian airspace, President Donald Trump and defense officials said.
The sudden and massive strike on Iranian nuclear sites Saturday night featured the use of some of the most powerful non-nuclear munitions in the American arsenal. Despite initial claims by Trump that the locations were “completely and totally obliterated,” initial assessment by American and Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times said that the sites appeared damaged but not destroyed. They added that it appeared nuclear material at Fordow had been moved in advance of the attack. Satellite imagery taken of the locations shows craters and major burn damage from the munitions. Iran’s government said it is still assessing the damage.
The attack was the largest strike ever conducted by B-2s, according to Caine and Hegseth, and the first time the GBU-57s were used in a combat operation. The powerful, 30,000-pound bombs were long deemed the only munition capable of destroying the underground installation at Fordow. The other two locations had already been hit by Israeli strikes over the last 10 days.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nation’s nuclear research, monitoring and anti-proliferation organization, assessed the impact and found that each of the three sites were heavily damaged, but not destroyed. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi also noted in his statement that there has been no spike in off-site radioactive levels.
“It is clear that Fordow was also directly impacted, but the degree of damage inside the uranium enrichment halls can’t be determined with certainty,” Grossi said.
If the initial assessments are correct, that limited impact should not be surprising, said Dr. John Carl Baker, director of programs for Ploughshares an anti-nuclear proliferation research foundation.
“Many experts have warned that strikes are unlikely to eradicate Iran’s program,” Baker told Task & Purpose. “Plus, military action could push Iran to actually construct nuclear weapons.”
Baker noted that the direct American involvement in the Israeli fight against Iran could “inflame the situation” and put American service members at risk if Iran launches reprisal strikes. Iran’s parliament approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, an important shipping route through which approximately a quarter of the world’s oil supply passes through, although final approval is still needed.
The U.S., along with several world powers including China, Russia and the European Union, reached a deal in 2015 for Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program. Trump pulled the United States out of that deal in his first term in office. Since then Iran has resumed enriching uranium, citing the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, and restarting activities at Fordow. Both the American intelligence community and the IAEA said that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon.
Prior to the attack and Israel and Iran exchanging barrages, the United States had been negotiating with Tehran over the country’s nuclear program.
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