Bombing Iran won't solve these five problems. But it might fix this one.
President Donald Trump's decision to bomb Fordow, Iran's most deeply buried uranium enrichment facility, caps a frenetic week of deliberations about whether the use of military force is the best way to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
But at its core, this is a tactical question with potentially significant consequences. Rather than submit, the Iranian government is likely to attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program regardless. This wouldn't be surprising in the least; Iran is estimated to have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the program and views it as a prime source of Iranian strength and independence. If anything, Israel's preventive war could play into the hands of those within the Iranian regime who already view a nuclear deterrent as necessary to ensure its survival. I believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who has been relatively cautious about his country's nuclear efforts, will find these arguments increasingly persuasive.
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Trump's MAGA Army Is Absolutely Ripping Him Apart Over The Iran Bombing, And Their Comments Are Pure Unfiltered Rage
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34 minutes ago
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What Satellite Images Reveal About the US Bombing of Iran's Nuclear Sites
Brian Barrett Andrew Couts Jun 22, 2025 5:41 PM The US concentrated its attack on Fordow, an enrichment plant built hundreds of feet underground. Aerial photos give important clues about what damage the 'bunker-buster' bombs may have caused. Six impact craters are visible at Iran's Fordow nuclear site the day after a US bombing campaign. Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters When the United States bombed Iran in the early hours of Sunday local time, it targeted three facilities central to the country's nuclear ambitions: the Fordow uranium enrichment plant, the Natanz nuclear facility, and the Isfahan nuclear technology center. Newly released satellite images show the impact of the attack—at least, what can be seen on the ground. The brunt of the bombing focused on Fordow, where US forces dropped a dozen GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators as part of its 'Midnight Hammer' operation. These 30,000-pound 'bunker-buster' bombs are designed to penetrate as deep as 200 feet into the earth before detonating. The Fordow complex is approximately 260 feet underground. That gap accounts for some of the uncertainty over exactly how much damage the Fordow site sustained. President Donald Trump shared a post on his Truth Social platform following the attack that declared 'Fordow is gone,' and later said in a televised address that 'Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.' His own military, however, was slightly more circumspect about the outcome in a Sunday morning briefing. 'It would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there,' said general Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Satellite imagery can inherently only tell you so much about a structure that is situated so far below the surface of the earth. But before and after imagery is the best publicly available information about the bombing's impact. A satellite image from before the US bombing of Fordow. Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters A satellite image from after the US bombing of Fordow. Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters 'What we see are six craters, two clusters of three, where there were 12 massive ordinance penetrators dropped,' says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. 'The idea is you hit the same spot over and over again to kind of dig down.' The specific locations of those craters matter as well, says Joseph Rodgers, deputy director and fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Project on Nuclear Issues. While the entrance tunnels to the Fordow complex appear not to have been targeted, US bombs fell on what are likely ventilation shafts, based on satellite images of early construction at the site. 'The reason that you'd want to target a ventilation shaft is that it's a more direct route to the core components of the underground facility,' says Rodgers. That direct route is especially important given how deep underground Fordow was built. The US military relies on "basically a computer model' of the facility, says Lewis, which tells them 'how much pressure it could take before it would severely damage everything inside and maybe even collapse the facility.' By bombarding specific targeted areas with multiple munitions, the US didn't need bombs capable of penetrating the full 260 feet to cause substantial damage. 'They're probably not trying to get all the way into the facility. They're probably just trying to get close enough to it and crush it with a shockwave,' Lewis says. 'If you send a big enough shockwave through that facility, it's going to kill people, break stuff, damage the integrity of it.' A closer satellite view shows the impact craters and a nearby support structures. Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters It's also notable what US bombs didn't hit. The oblong white building in satellite images of Fordow is likely key support infrastructure for the facility, potentially providing everything from air conditioning to backup power generation. 'The US didn't even bother targeting it. That clearly indicates to me that they weren't trying to temporarily shut down the facility,' Rodgers says. 'We targeted these apparent ventilation shafts so that we could structurally destroy or do as much damage as we could rather than temporarily try to shut down Fordow.' Once a long-held secret, the Iranian government officially acknowledged Fordow's existence in 2009. The facility is believed to be capable of enriching uranium to 60 percent. From there, experts say, it can relatively quickly be further enriched to 90 percent, the level needed for constructing nuclear weapons. The US bombing came more than a week after Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran with the stated goal of stopping Tehran's nuclear program. Israel lacks munitions capable of reaching deeply buried facilities like Fordow, which appears to be why the US entered the fray. It is currently unclear how impactful this weekend's bombing campaign will be on Iran's long-term nuclear ambitions. Lewis says the strike was 'tactically brilliant, but strategically incomplete,' because Iranians still have nuclear material that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels. 'They still have underground facilities where they could do that, and they still have the ability to produce centrifuge components, so they can still make the centrifuges for the facilities.' Further complicating the assessment of the Fordow damage is that satellite images from earlier last week show a significant amount of activity at the site, including over a dozen dump trucks going to and from it. 'I think there were some defense operations going on,' says Rodgers. 'They probably brought those dump trucks in to try to seal off the tunnel entrances, to help protect against attacks.' There's also the possibility that Iran was able to move nuclear material out of the facility before the attack, limiting the bombing's usefulness. Ultimately, Iran's nuclear program has likely 'been damaged,' Lewis says. 'It has not been eliminated.' Additional reporting by Lily Hay Newman.
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump vowed to keep US out of wars. What changed when he decided to bomb Iran?
President Donald Trump campaigned on stopping "endless wars." He also entered office vowing to bring a swift closure to conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. Five months in, he's joined Israel's war on Iran's nuclear facilities. So what's changed? And what were the warning signs Trump was prepared to become the third wheel in an Israel-Iran contest for regional dominance that's been playing out for decades? It's not clear what exact damage was done in Iran. The White House says U.S. bombers decimated three uranium enrichment facilities. What comes next is also far from certain: additional U.S. strikes, Iran's retaliation, a resumption of diplomacy, even? Is this the start of the collapse of Iran's clerical regime? Is it a historical moment akin to the breakup of the Soviet Union? What's indisputable is that one pull factor for the U.S. is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long, complicated relationship with recent American presidents. The U.S. bombing of Iran is also the culmination of a process that traces at least as far back to the 1990s when Netanyahu, then a young lawmaker, predicted the Islamic Republic, Israel's sworn enemy, would one day either acquire, or be on the cusp of acquiring, a nuclear weapon and Israel would be forced to act − ideally with U.S. help. "Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb," Netanyahu said in 1992. His prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, "Fighting Terrorism." Netanyahu is the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in the Jewish state's history. He's occupied the role on and off for more than 17 years. In every one of those years he's sought to convince American presidents to bomb Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for civilian energy purposes only. Netanyahu has appeared at the United Nations with elaborate maps and cartoon-style drawings of bombs. He worked hard to scupper the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers that Trump exited because he said Iranian officials could not be trusted. In 2002, Netanyahu told a U.S. congressional committee that both Iraq and Iran would soon have a nuclear bomb. A year later the U.S. invaded Iraq. In 2009, he told members of Congress in private that Iran was just a year or two away from producing a nuclear weapon, according to a U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Successive American presidents have listened and acted on Netanyahu's Iran warnings, most substantively politically in the form of the Obama administration's 2015 nuclear deal, which was designed to limit Iran's uranium enrichment in return for relief of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. When Trump, in his first term, exited that agreement it was working in the sense that Iran was not enriching uranium at a level necessary to produce a nuclear weapon, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. Netanyahu's public and private relationships with recent American presidents have been marked by chilly tensions and insults. In 2015, Netanyahu's spokesman apologized to former President Barack Obama. He has also clashed with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Netanyahu has even annoyed Trump, although their relationship trends toward mutual lavish praise. But no American president − until now − has gone along with Netanyahu's war plans for Iran, fearing the U.S. could be dragged into a wider Middle East war. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan still haunt U.S. presidents. "The president more than anybody is worried about protracted military conflicts and that is not what we are getting ourselves involved in,' U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on ABC's "This Week" program on June 22. Vance said the Trump administration is also not trying to force regime change in Iran. Trump may also not be as risk averse to military actions as is sometimes portrayed, including by himself. In his first term, he ordered a missile attack in Syria to punish then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons; a raid to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; and a drone attack that killed Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military commander much beloved in Iran whose death led to Iranian reprisals on U.S. bases in Iraq. Also in the background: The IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, and former U.S. officials such as Dan Shapiro, U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, say Iran's nuclear capabilities have advanced since Trump exited the nuclear deal. "Iran cannot be left with an enrichment capability, able to produce a nuclear weapon at a time of its choosing," Shapiro wrote in a recent blog post. Trump has made various comments for years that reflect that sentiment. The main thrust of his remarks in recent weeks have been to say he won't allow Iran to continue its nuclear enrichment program, and Tehran could give it up through negotiation or through what he called "the hard way." After first pushing for a diplomatic solution, Trump's tone changed after Israel on June 13 struck dozens of nuclear and military targets in Iran, killing many of Iran's military elite and senior nuclear scientists. By June 17, the president was threatening Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on social media, calling him an "easy target." See updated maps, satellite images: Iran's nuclear sites before and after Israeli attacks Trump likes a winner. He often says so himself. In the days leading up to the U.S. strike, Israel appeared to be winning. "Congratulations, President Trump, your bold decision to target Iran's nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,' Netanyahu said in a statement as he addressed the world on June 22 to update them on the war's latest development. He spoke in English, not Hebrew. In his own address, to the American people, Trump said, "I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel." Not mentioned: U.S. intelligence agencies assessed earlier this year that they did not think Iran was close to building a nuclear bomb. Contributing: Francesca Chambers, Tom Vanden Brook This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump vowed to keep US out of wars. What changed with Iran attack?
