“DOUBLE TAP”
Reuters spoke to 4 consultants who reviewed Maxar Applied sciences satellite tv for pc imagery of Fordow displaying six neatly spaced holes in two teams within the mountain ridge beneath which the corridor containing the centrifuges is believed to be positioned.
Normal Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Employees, instructed reporters that seven B-2 bombers dropped 14 GBU-57/B MOPs, 30,000-pound precision-guided bombs designed to drive as much as 200 ft into hardened underground amenities like Fordow, in accordance with a 2012 congressional report.
Caine mentioned preliminary assessments indicated that the websites suffered extraordinarily extreme injury, however declined to invest about whether or not any nuclear amenities remained intact.
Eveleth mentioned the Maxar imagery of Fordow and Caine’s feedback indicated that the B-2s dropped an preliminary load of six MOPs on Fordow, adopted by a “double faucet” of six extra in the very same spots.
Operation Midnight Hammer additionally focused Tehran’s predominant uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, he mentioned, and struck in Isfahan, the placement of the nation’s largest nuclear analysis centre. There are different nuclear-related websites close to town.
Israel had already struck Natanz and the Isfahan Nuclear Analysis Middle in its 10-day warfare with Iran.
Albright mentioned in a submit on X that Airbus Defence and Area satellite tv for pc imagery confirmed that US Tomahawk cruise missiles severely broken a uranium facility at Isfahan and left an impression gap above the underground enrichment halls at Natanz, reportedly attributable to a Huge Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bomb that “probably destroyed the ability.”
Albright questioned the US use of cruise missiles in Isfahan, saying that these weapons couldn’t penetrate a tunnel advanced close to the primary nuclear analysis centre believed to be even deeper than Fordow. The IAEA mentioned the tunnel entrances “had been impacted”.
He famous that Iran lately knowledgeable the IAEA that it deliberate to put in a brand new uranium enrichment plant in Isfahan.
“There could also be 2,000 to three,000 extra centrifuges that had been slated to enter this new enrichment plant,” he mentioned. “The place are they?”