Australia's enduring love affair with the US is at a critical point
Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997).
Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket.
As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall.
It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt.
As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive.
Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential.
Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability.
In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance.
In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity.
Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate.
The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against.
McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold.
Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism.
Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here.
"Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian.
As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium.
READ MORE KENNY:
It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms.
As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back.
Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it.
Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too.
To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes?
Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997).
Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket.
As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall.
It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt.
As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive.
Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential.
Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability.
In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance.
In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity.
Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate.
The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against.
McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold.
Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism.
Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here.
"Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian.
As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium.
READ MORE KENNY:
It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms.
As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back.
Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it.
Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too.
To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes?
Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997).
Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket.
As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall.
It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt.
As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive.
Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential.
Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability.
In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance.
In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity.
Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate.
The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against.
McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold.
Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism.
Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here.
"Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian.
As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium.
READ MORE KENNY:
It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms.
As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back.
Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it.
Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too.
To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes?
Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997).
Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket.
As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall.
It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt.
As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive.
Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential.
Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability.
In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance.
In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity.
Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate.
The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against.
McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold.
Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism.
Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here.
"Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian.
As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium.
READ MORE KENNY:
It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms.
As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back.
Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it.
Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too.
To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes?
Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Decoys, bunker-busters and stealth bombers: How America attacked Iran
The US strikes that targeted Iran's nuclear sites involved a decoy mission aimed at drawing attention from flight trackers as the largest-ever deployment of B-2 stealth bombers dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs for the first time in combat. The operation – dubbed 'Midnight Hammer' – was detailed by top Pentagon officials on Sunday night (AEST). They described an extensive operation that included 125 aircraft overall, strikes by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine and the use of 14 massive ordnance penetrator – or bunker-buster – bombs. The heart of the 37-hour operation was a feint in which a group of B-2 bombers flew west across the Pacific Ocean as decoys to maintain tactical surprise, according to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. News reports on Saturday morning that picked up on flight-tracker data suggested those planes were being deployed as a way to strong-arm Iran into fresh talks on its nuclear program. While those planes got all the attention, another group of B-2s flew east carrying the bunker-busters. The officials said dozens of air-refuelling tankers, a guided missile submarine, and fourth- and fifth-generation fighters were involved in the attack, which struck nuclear Iran's facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. The briefing helped explain other data points that emerged in recent days, including a massive move by midair refuelling tankers last week that was widely reported at the time. The White House had promised on Thursday that President Donald Trump would make a decision on a strike 'within two weeks,' suggesting there might be more time. In the end, the operation on Sunday (AEST) was deemed a success by the Pentagon. No Americans were lost and Iran didn't fire at any of the US military assets, according to the officials.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Decoys, bunker-busters and stealth bombers: How America attacked Iran
The US strikes that targeted Iran's nuclear sites involved a decoy mission aimed at drawing attention from flight trackers as the largest-ever deployment of B-2 stealth bombers dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs for the first time in combat. The operation – dubbed 'Midnight Hammer' – was detailed by top Pentagon officials on Sunday night (AEST). They described an extensive operation that included 125 aircraft overall, strikes by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine and the use of 14 massive ordnance penetrator – or bunker-buster – bombs. The heart of the 37-hour operation was a feint in which a group of B-2 bombers flew west across the Pacific Ocean as decoys to maintain tactical surprise, according to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. News reports on Saturday morning that picked up on flight-tracker data suggested those planes were being deployed as a way to strong-arm Iran into fresh talks on its nuclear program. While those planes got all the attention, another group of B-2s flew east carrying the bunker-busters. The officials said dozens of air-refuelling tankers, a guided missile submarine, and fourth- and fifth-generation fighters were involved in the attack, which struck nuclear Iran's facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. The briefing helped explain other data points that emerged in recent days, including a massive move by midair refuelling tankers last week that was widely reported at the time. The White House had promised on Thursday that President Donald Trump would make a decision on a strike 'within two weeks,' suggesting there might be more time. In the end, the operation on Sunday (AEST) was deemed a success by the Pentagon. No Americans were lost and Iran didn't fire at any of the US military assets, according to the officials.
The Advertiser
3 hours ago
- The Advertiser
US bunker-buster bombs the best chance to hit Fordo
In inserting itself into Israel's war against Iran, Washington unleashed its massive "bunker-buster" bombs on Iran's Fordo fuel enrichment plant. Those bombs were widely seen as the best chance of damaging or destroying Fordo, built deep into a mountain and untouched during Israel's week-long offensive. Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 14 of the bombs were used in Sunday's attack on Fordo and a second target. The US is the only military capable of dropping the weapons, and the movement of B-2 stealth bombers toward Asia on Saturday had signaled possible activity by the US. Israeli leaders had made no secret of their hopes that President Donald Trump would join their week-old war against Iran, though they had also suggested they had backup plans for destroying the site. In all, the US hit three nuclear sites and Caine told reporters Sunday that "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage." The mission could have wide-ranging ramifications, including jeopardising any chance of Iran engaging in Trump's desired talks on its nuclear program and dragging the US into another Mideast war. "Bunker buster" is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding. In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 13,600 kilogram precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the US Air Force. It's believed to be able to penetrate about 60 metres below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. It was not immediately known how many were used in the Sunday morning strike. The bomb carries a conventional warhead, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, which had raised the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility. Initial assessments by the IAEA, however, were that this had not happened. Fordo is Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its main facility, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and was also hit by the US on Sunday, along with Isfahan. The IAEA says it believes those earlier strikes have had "direct impacts" on the facility's underground centrifuge halls. In theory, the GBU-57 A/B could be dropped by any bomber capable of carrying the weight, but at the moment the US has only configured and programed its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to deliver the bomb, according to the Air Force. In inserting itself into Israel's war against Iran, Washington unleashed its massive "bunker-buster" bombs on Iran's Fordo fuel enrichment plant. Those bombs were widely seen as the best chance of damaging or destroying Fordo, built deep into a mountain and untouched during Israel's week-long offensive. Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 14 of the bombs were used in Sunday's attack on Fordo and a second target. The US is the only military capable of dropping the weapons, and the movement of B-2 stealth bombers toward Asia on Saturday had signaled possible activity by the US. Israeli leaders had made no secret of their hopes that President Donald Trump would join their week-old war against Iran, though they had also suggested they had backup plans for destroying the site. In all, the US hit three nuclear sites and Caine told reporters Sunday that "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage." The mission could have wide-ranging ramifications, including jeopardising any chance of Iran engaging in Trump's desired talks on its nuclear program and dragging the US into another Mideast war. "Bunker buster" is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding. In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 13,600 kilogram precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the US Air Force. It's believed to be able to penetrate about 60 metres below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. It was not immediately known how many were used in the Sunday morning strike. The bomb carries a conventional warhead, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, which had raised the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility. Initial assessments by the IAEA, however, were that this had not happened. Fordo is Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its main facility, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and was also hit by the US on Sunday, along with Isfahan. The IAEA says it believes those earlier strikes have had "direct impacts" on the facility's underground centrifuge halls. In theory, the GBU-57 A/B could be dropped by any bomber capable of carrying the weight, but at the moment the US has only configured and programed its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to deliver the bomb, according to the Air Force. In inserting itself into Israel's war against Iran, Washington unleashed its massive "bunker-buster" bombs on Iran's Fordo fuel enrichment plant. Those bombs were widely seen as the best chance of damaging or destroying Fordo, built deep into a mountain and untouched during Israel's week-long offensive. Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 14 of the bombs were used in Sunday's attack on Fordo and a second target. The US is the only military capable of dropping the weapons, and the movement of B-2 stealth bombers toward Asia on Saturday had signaled possible activity by the US. Israeli leaders had made no secret of their hopes that President Donald Trump would join their week-old war against Iran, though they had also suggested they had backup plans for destroying the site. In all, the US hit three nuclear sites and Caine told reporters Sunday that "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage." The mission could have wide-ranging ramifications, including jeopardising any chance of Iran engaging in Trump's desired talks on its nuclear program and dragging the US into another Mideast war. "Bunker buster" is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding. In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 13,600 kilogram precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the US Air Force. It's believed to be able to penetrate about 60 metres below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. It was not immediately known how many were used in the Sunday morning strike. The bomb carries a conventional warhead, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, which had raised the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility. Initial assessments by the IAEA, however, were that this had not happened. Fordo is Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its main facility, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and was also hit by the US on Sunday, along with Isfahan. The IAEA says it believes those earlier strikes have had "direct impacts" on the facility's underground centrifuge halls. In theory, the GBU-57 A/B could be dropped by any bomber capable of carrying the weight, but at the moment the US has only configured and programed its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to deliver the bomb, according to the Air Force. In inserting itself into Israel's war against Iran, Washington unleashed its massive "bunker-buster" bombs on Iran's Fordo fuel enrichment plant. Those bombs were widely seen as the best chance of damaging or destroying Fordo, built deep into a mountain and untouched during Israel's week-long offensive. Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 14 of the bombs were used in Sunday's attack on Fordo and a second target. The US is the only military capable of dropping the weapons, and the movement of B-2 stealth bombers toward Asia on Saturday had signaled possible activity by the US. Israeli leaders had made no secret of their hopes that President Donald Trump would join their week-old war against Iran, though they had also suggested they had backup plans for destroying the site. In all, the US hit three nuclear sites and Caine told reporters Sunday that "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage." The mission could have wide-ranging ramifications, including jeopardising any chance of Iran engaging in Trump's desired talks on its nuclear program and dragging the US into another Mideast war. "Bunker buster" is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding. In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 13,600 kilogram precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the US Air Force. It's believed to be able to penetrate about 60 metres below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. It was not immediately known how many were used in the Sunday morning strike. The bomb carries a conventional warhead, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, which had raised the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility. Initial assessments by the IAEA, however, were that this had not happened. Fordo is Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its main facility, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and was also hit by the US on Sunday, along with Isfahan. The IAEA says it believes those earlier strikes have had "direct impacts" on the facility's underground centrifuge halls. In theory, the GBU-57 A/B could be dropped by any bomber capable of carrying the weight, but at the moment the US has only configured and programed its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to deliver the bomb, according to the Air Force.
