Pentagon details strike on Iran's Fordow, but leaves open key questions
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said the strike on Iran's Fordow facility was 15 years in the making.
WASHINGTON − After a Pentagon assessment found the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities had only set back Iran's nuclear program by months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his highest-ranking military officer divulged more details of the strike on Fordow, one of the nuclear sites, but left key questions unanswered.
As reports emerged that an initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency found the strikes left core components of Iran's nuclear program intact and set it back by a year or less, President Donald Trump and Hegseth dug in on their assertion that the program was "obliterated."
The strike was "decimating – choose your word – obliterating, destroying," Hegseth said at a June 26 early morning news conference. He characterized the report as "low confidence" and said it had "gaps in the information."
Caine describes Fordow strike, leaves out Natanz, Isfahan
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared more details of the strike on the Fordow nuclear site during the news conference, but left open questions about attacks on the other two sites – Natanz and Isfahan – and whether the Pentagon knows what happened to Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles.
Caine described the work of a pair of officers at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency who intensively studied the Fordow facility for more than 15 years and designed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster bombs to destroy it. They played a key role in planning the strike, he said.
A dozen penetrating bombs targeted two ventilation shafts located on opposite sides of Fordow that Iran tried to cover over with concrete in the days leading up to the strike, Caine said.
On each side, the first bomb blew open the shaft and the next four bombs entered "at greater than 1,000 feet per second," he said. The sixth bomb acted as "flex weapon" in case of an issue with one of the preceding bombs, he added.
All six bombs "went exactly where they were intended to go," he added.
Caine played reporters a video of a test bomb burrowing into a shaft and exploding and a picture of the hole it left in the ground.
"Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won't see an impact crater," he said.
Hegseth touted Caine's explanation as proof the bombs fully demolished Fordow.
But no mention was made of the aftermath at Natanz, which was targeted by two penetrator bombs, or Isfahan, which was struck only by missiles fired from a Navy submarine. In the wake of the strikes, experts and watchers of Iran's nuclear program raised questions of what happened to the 880 pounds of enriched uranium believed to be deeply buried in underground tunnels at Isfahan.
More: Key parts of Iran's nuclear program still intact, says Pentagon report disputed by Trump
Satellite images from Maxar Technology also captured a line of cargo trucks parked outside Fordow in the days before strikes, stirring speculation of whether Iran had moved some of its nuclear equipment. Iranian officials have also claimed they took materials out of the facility.
Pressed by reporters on those questions, Hegseth did not have answers.
"We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where," he said.
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