US bombing of Iran started with a fake-out
As Operation "Midnight Hammer" got underway on Saturday, a group of B-2 bombers took off from their base in Missouri and were noticed heading out toward the Pacific island of Guam, in what experts saw as possible pre-positioning for any U.S. decision to strike Iran.
But they were a decoy. The real group of seven bat-winged, B-2 stealth bombers flew east undetected for 18 hours, keeping communications to a minimum, refueling in mid-air, the U.S. military revealed on Sunday.
As the bombers neared Iranian airspace, a U.S. submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. U.S. fighter jets flew as decoys in front of the bombers to sweep for any Iranian fighter jets and missiles.
The attack on Iran's three main nuclear sites was the largest operational strike ever by B-2 stealth bombers, and the second-longest B-2 operation ever flown, surpassed only by those following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda.
The B-2 bombers dropped 14 bunker-busting GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, each weighing 30,000 pounds. The operation involved over 125 U.S. military aircraft, according to the Pentagon.
From the U.S. military's perspective, the operation was a resounding tactical success. The Iranians were unable to get off a single round at the American aircraft and were caught completely flat-footed, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Sunday.
"Iran's fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran's surface to air missile systems did not see us throughout the mission," Caine said. "We retained the element of surprise."
Caine said initial battle damage assessments indicated that all three sites targeted sustained extremely severe damage and destruction, but he declined to speculate whether any Iranian nuclear capabilities might still be intact.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was more confident.
"It was clear we devastated the Iranian nuclear program," he said, standing alongside Caine in the Pentagon briefing room.
Midnight Hammer was highly classified, Caine said, "with very few people in Washington knowing the timing or nature of the plan." Many senior officials in the United States only learned of it on Saturday night from President Donald Trump's first post on social media.
Hegseth said it took months of preparations to ensure the U.S. military would be ready if Trump ordered the strikes. Caine said the mission itself, however, came together in just a matter of weeks.
What happens next is unclear.
Gulf states, home to multiple U.S. military bases, were on high alert on Sunday as they weighed the risks of a widening conflict in the region.
Guarding against blowback, the U.S. military also dispersed U.S. military assets in the Middle East and heightened force protection for U.S. troops.
Hegseth said the U.S. military was positioned to defend itself in the Middle East, but also to respond against Iran if it goes through with longstanding threats to retaliate.
The Trump administration said it is not looking for a wider war with Iran, with Hegseth saying private messages had been sent to Tehran encouraging them to negotiate.
But Trump has also warned Iran that the U.S. is prepared to hit additional targets if needed, using far greater force.
"Iran would be smart to heed those words. He said it before, and he means it," Hegseth said.
** Satellite images indicate severe damage to Fordow, but doubts remain
Commercial satellite imagery indicates the U.S. attack on Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant severely damaged - and possibly destroyed - the deeply-buried site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but there was no confirmation, experts said on Sunday.
“They just punched through with these MOPs,” said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, referring to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bombs that the U.S. said it dropped. “I would expect that the facility is probably toast.”
But confirmation of the below-ground destruction could not be determined, noted Decker Eveleth, an associate researcher with the CNA Corporation who specializes in satellite imagery. The hall containing hundreds of centrifuges is "too deeply buried for us to evaluate the level of damage based on satellite imagery," he said.
To defend against attacks such as the one conducted by U.S. forces early on Sunday, Iran buried much of its nuclear program in fortified sites deep underground, including into the side of a mountain at Fordow.
Satellite images show six holes where the bunker-busting bombs appear to have penetrated the mountain, and then ground that looks disturbed and covered in dust.
The United States and Israel have said they intend to halt Tehran's nuclear program. But a failure to completely destroy its facilities and equipment could mean Iran could more easily restart the weapons program that U.S. intelligence and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say it shuttered in 2003.
'UNUSUAL ACTIVITY'
Several experts also cautioned that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of Fordow before the strike early Sunday morning and could be hiding it and other nuclear components in locations unknown to Israel, the U.S. and U.N. nuclear inspectors.
They noted satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showing "unusual activity" at Fordow on Thursday and Friday, with a long line of vehicles waiting outside an entrance of the facility. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday most of the near weapons-grade 60% highly enriched uranium had been moved to an undisclosed location before the U.S. attack.
"I don't think you can with great confidence do anything but set back their nuclear program by maybe a few years," said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. "There's almost certainly facilities that we don't know about."
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat and member of the Senate intelligence committee who said he had been reviewing intelligence every day, expressed the same concern.
"My big fear right now is that they take this entire program underground, not physically underground, but under the radar," he told NBC News. "Where we tried to stop it, there is a possibility that this could accelerate it."
Iran long has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
But in response to Israel's attacks, Iran's parliament is threatening to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of the international system that went into force in 1970 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, ending cooperation with the IAEA.
"The world is going to be in the dark about what Iran may be doing," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association advocacy group.
'DOUBLE TAP'
Reuters spoke to four experts who reviewed Maxar Technologies satellite imagery of Fordow showing six neatly spaced holes in two groups in the mountain ridge beneath which the hall containing the centrifuges is believed to be located.
General Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that seven B-2 bombers dropped 14 GBU-57/B MOPs, 30,000-pound precision-guided bombs designed to drive up to 200 feet into hardened underground facilities like Fordow, according to a 2012 congressional report.
Caine said initial assessments indicated that the sites suffered extremely severe damage, but declined to speculate about whether any nuclear facilities remained intact.
Eveleth said the Maxar imagery of Fordow and Caine's comments indicated that the B-2s dropped an initial load of six MOPs on Fordow, followed by a "double tap" of six more in the exact same spots.
Operation Midnight Hammer also targeted Tehran’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, he said, and struck in Isfahan, the location of the country's largest nuclear research center. There are other nuclear-related sites near the city.
Israel had already struck Natanz and the Isfahan Nuclear Research Center in its 10-day war with Iran.
Albright said in a post on X that Airbus Defence and Space satellite imagery showed that U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles severely damaged a uranium facility at Isfahan and an impact hole above the underground enrichment halls at Natanz reportedly caused by a Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bomb that "likely destroyed the facility."
Albright questioned the U.S. use of cruise missiles in Isfahan, saying that those weapons could not penetrate a tunnel complex near the main nuclear research center believed to be even deeper than Fordow. The IAEA said the tunnel entrances "were impacted."
He noted that Iran recently informed the IAEA that it planned to install a new uranium enrichment plant in Isfahan.
"There may be 2,000 to 3,000 more centrifuges that were slated to go into this new enrichment plant," he said. "Where are they?"
Reuters
