Latest news with #MassiveOrdnancePenetrators
Time of India
an hour ago
- Politics
- Time of India
'Bullseye': Donald Trump hails op Midnight Hammer; says 'monumental damage' done to Iran's nuclear sites
US President Donald Trump on Sunday said that the recent airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities delivered a devastating blow to Tehran's nuclear programme. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term! The white structure shown is deeply imbedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level, and completely shielded from flame. The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" Operation 'Midnight Hammer' The attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear site, carried out Saturday evening at 6:40 pm ET, involved dropping a total of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), also known as 'bunker busters,' from multiple B-2 bomber jets. The mission marked the first time the US has used the massive 15-ton GBU-57 bombs in combat. US President Donald Trump praised the mission in a statement on Truth Social, writing: 'There is not another military in the world that could have done this.'
NDTV
2 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
Satellite Images Question Trump's Claim Iran's Atomic Sites Destroyed
President Donald Trump's decision to order US forces to attack three key Iranian nuclear installations may have sabotaged the Islamic Republic's known atomic capabilities, but it's also created a monumental new challenge to work out what's left and where. Trump said heavily fortified sites were "totally obliterated" late Saturday, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. Rather than yielding a quick win, the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring Iran doesn't build a weapon, according to three people who follow the country's nuclear program. International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13. They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran's declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground. Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran's underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow. Satellite images taken on Sunday of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 meters (18 feet) in diameter. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility. The image doesn't offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 meters under ground and reinforced with an 8-meter think concrete and steel shell. US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference earlier on Sunday that an assessment of "final battle damage will take some time." IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven't been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country's stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location. Indeed, there's just a slim possibility that the US entering the war will convince Iran to increase IAEA cooperation, said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. "The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don't work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future," she said. The IAEA called on a cessation of hostilities in order to address the situation. Its 35-nation board will convene on Monday in Vienna, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. Before the US intervention, images showed Israeli forces alone had met with limited success four days after the bombing began. Damage to the central facility in Natanz, located 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Tehran, was primarily limited to electricity switch yards and transformers. The US also joined in attacking the Isfahan Nuclear Technology and Research Center, located 450 kilometers south of Tehran. That was after the IAEA re-assessed the level of damage Israel had dealt to the facility. Based on satellite images and communications with Iranian counterparts Isfahan appeared "extensively damaged," the agency wrote late on Saturday. Images now show extensive new damage after the US bombing, including to a large cluster of industrial buildings identified by Bloomberg last week. The IAEA reported earlier that the destruction may result in "radioactive and chemical contamination within the facilities that were hit." The IAEA's central mission is to account for gram-levels of uranium around the world and to ensure it isn't used for nuclear weapons. The latest bombing now complicates tracking Iranian uranium even further, said Tariq Rauf, the former head of the IAEA's nuclear-verification policy. "It will now be very difficult for the IAEA to establish a material balance for the nearly 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, especially the nearly 410 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium," he said. Last week, inspectors had already acknowledged they'd lost track of the location of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile because Israel's ongoing military assaults are preventing its inspectors from doing their work. That uranium inventory - enough to make 10 nuclear warheads at a clandestine location - was seen at Isfahan by IAEA inspectors. But the material, which could fit in as few as 16 small containers, may have already been spirited off site. "Questions remain as to where Iran may be storing its already enriched stocks," Dozikova said. "These will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or US strikes." Iran's ambitions to make the fuel needed for nuclear power plants and weapons involve heavily fortified infrastructure across the country with thousands of scientists and engineers working at dozens of sites. Even as military analysts await more images before determining the success of Trump's mission, nuclear safeguards analysts have reached the conclusion that their work is about to become significantly harder. By bombing Iran's sites, Israel and the US haven't just disrupted the IAEA's accountancy of Iran's nuclear stockpile, they've also degraded the tools that monitors will be able to use, said Robert Kelley, who led inspections of Iraq and Libya as an IAEA director. That includes the forensic method used to detect the potential diversion of uranium. "Now that sites have been bombed and all classes of materials have been scattered everywhere the IAEA will never again be able to use environmental sampling," he said. "Particles of every isotopic description have infinite half-lives for forensic purposes and it will be impossible to sort out their origin."
Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Science
- Boston Globe
What visuals show of damage to Iran's nuclear sites after US strike
In an image provided by Maxar Technologies, the ridge at the Fordow underground complex is seen after the United States struck the nuclear facility near Qom, Iran, on Sunday, June 22, 2025. SATELLITE IMAGE ©2025 MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/NYT Advertisement Blast analysts cautioned against drawing conclusions too quickly, as underground impacts depend on a variety of factors, including depth of detonation and surrounding geology. Between 1:45 and 2:30 a.m. local time, satellites used for spotting fires and severe weather around the world appear to have detected significant heat-related events close to the Fordow site. The heat signatures were captured in a location that experts said was used for air defense at the site. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that as the B-2 stealth bombers carrying bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrators approached Fordow and Natanz, U.S. forces deployed 'suppression weapons' against any potential Iranian surface-to-air threats. Ultimately, Iran's air-defense systems did not appear to fire at the U.S. aircraft on their way in and out of Iranian airspace, Pentagon officials said. Advertisement About 2:10 a.m. local time, Caine said, the lead B-2 bomber dropped the first two GBU-57 MOPs on the Fordow facility. The 30,000-pound precision-guided bombs are designed to destroy subterranean targets. In total, seven B-2s dropped 14 bombs at Fordow and Natanz, according to officials. Satellite images taken Sunday morning show two clusters of three entry points along the ridge above the Fordow facility, according to experts who reviewed imagery of the aftermath. In an image provided by Maxar Technologies, a crater is visible over the underground Natanz Enrichment Facility after it was hit by United States airstrikes, near Natanz, Iran, on Sunday, June 22, 2025. SATELLITE IMAGE ©2025 MAXAR TEC/NYT The analysts said the strikes appear to have targeted the 250-meter-long cascade hall - the main part of the facility where the centrifuges are located - which was built into the mountain and later covered. Clustering several munitions around a single point of impact is a common targeting method for destroying bunkers and well-hardened structures, said Wes Bryant, the former chief of civilian harm assessments at the Pentagon's Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Satellite images from the days before the U.S. strike showed 'unusual truck and vehicular activity' at Fordow, according to a senior analyst at the satellite firm Maxar Technologies. On Thursday, there were 16 cargo trucks along the access road leading to the underground military complex. Images taken the next day show that most of the trucks had moved a little more than a half-mile northwest, farther from the facility, according to the analysis. Other trucks and bulldozers were positioned near the site's entrance, including one truck directly next to it. Spencer Faragasso, senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, who reviewed an image taken Saturday before the strikes, said among other reasons, the Iranians may have backfilled the tunnels as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of hazardous material. Advertisement This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a close view of the Isfahan nuclear technology in Iran after U.S. strikes, Monday, June 22, 2025. Uncredited/Associated Press 'They probably shut things down and removed what they could, then sealed it up,' Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said in a message, leaving Washington and Jerusalem to play 'whack-a-mole with Iran.' Now, the tunnel entrances near where trucks were seen appear to be filled with dirt, either from the shock wave of the bombing or from previous Iranian activity. A coating of gray-blue ash made of debris from the facility lays across the sand. Jonathan Baran, Alex Horton and Souad Mekhennet contributed to this report.
Calgary Herald
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Calgary Herald
Satellite images undermine Trump's claim Iran's atomic sites destroyed
(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump's decision to order US forces to attack three key Iranian nuclear installations may have sabotaged the Islamic Republic's known atomic capabilities, but it's also created a monumental new challenge to work out what's left and where. Article content Trump said heavily fortified sites were 'totally obliterated' late Saturday, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. Rather than yielding a quick win, the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring Iran doesn't build a weapon, according to three people who follow the country's nuclear program. Article content Article content Article content International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13. They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran's declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground. Article content Article content Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran's underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow. Article content Satellite images taken on Sunday of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. Article content They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. Article content Article content New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 meters (18 feet) in diameter. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility. The image doesn't offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 meters under ground and reinforced with an 8-meter think concrete and steel shell. Article content US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference earlier on Sunday that an assessment of 'final battle damage will take some time.' IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven't been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country's stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location. Article content Indeed, there's just a slim possibility that the US entering the war will convince Iran to increase IAEA cooperation, said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
Boston Globe
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Satellite images undermine Trump's claim Iran's atomic sites destroyed
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran's underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow. Advertisement Bloomberg Satellite images taken on Sunday of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 meters (18 feet) in diameter. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility. The image doesn't offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 meters under ground and reinforced with an 8-meter think concrete and steel shell. Advertisement In an image provided by Maxar Technologies, a crater is visible over the underground Natanz Enrichment Facility after it was hit by United States airstrikes, near Natanz, Iran, on Sunday, June 22, 2025. SATELLITE IMAGE ©2025 MAXAR TEC/NYT US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference earlier on Sunday that an assessment of 'final battle damage will take some time.' IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven't been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country's stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location. Indeed, there's just a slim possibility that the US entering the war will convince Iran to increase IAEA cooperation, said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. 'The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don't work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future,' she said. Sign up for our breaking news alerts for the latest developments on the Israel-Iran war. The IAEA called on a cessation of hostilities in order to address the situation. Its 35-nation board will convene on Monday in Vienna, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. Before the US intervention, images showed Israeli forces alone had met with limited success four days after the bombing began. Damage to the central facility in Natanz, located 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Tehran, was primarily limited to electricity switch yards and transformers. The US also joined in attacking the Isfahan Nuclear Technology and Research Center, located 450 kilometers south of Tehran. That was after the IAEA re-assessed the level of damage Israel had dealt to the facility. Based on satellite images and communications with Iranian counterparts Isfahan appeared 'extensively damaged,' the agency wrote late on Saturday. Advertisement Images now show extensive new damage after the US bombing, including to a large cluster of industrial buildings identified by Bloomberg last week. The IAEA reported earlier that the destruction may result in 'radioactive and chemical contamination within the facilities that were hit.' The IAEA's central mission is to account for gram-levels of uranium around the world and to ensure it isn't used for nuclear weapons. The latest bombing now complicates tracking Iranian uranium even further, said Tariq Rauf, the former head of the IAEA's nuclear-verification policy. 'It will now be very difficult for the IAEA to establish a material balance for the nearly 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, especially the nearly 410 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium,' he said. Last week, inspectors had already acknowledged they'd lost track of the location of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile because Israel's ongoing military assaults are preventing its inspectors from doing their work. That uranium inventory — enough to make 10 nuclear warheads at a clandestine location — was seen at Isfahan by IAEA inspectors. But the material, which could fit in as few as 16 small containers, may have already been spirited off site. 'Questions remain as to where Iran may be storing its already enriched stocks,' Dozikova said. 'These will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or US strikes.' Iran's ambitions to make the fuel needed for nuclear power plants and weapons involve heavily fortified infrastructure across the country with thousands of scientists and engineers working at dozens of sites. Advertisement Even as military analysts await more images before determining the success of Trump's mission, nuclear safeguards analysts have reached the conclusion that their work is about to become significantly harder. By bombing Iran's sites, Israel and the US haven't just disrupted the IAEA's accountancy of Iran's nuclear stockpile, they've also degraded the tools that monitors will be able to use, said Robert Kelley, who led inspections of Iraq and Libya as an IAEA director. That includes the forensic method used to detect the potential diversion of uranium. 'Now that sites have been bombed and all classes of materials have been scattered everywhere the IAEA will never again be able to use environmental sampling,' he said. 'Particles of every isotopic description have infinite half-lives for forensic purposes and it will be impossible to sort out their origin.'
