The United States has launched airstrikes against Iran’s key nuclear enrichment sites, deploying B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to deliver previously unused 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.
In a televised address late on 21 June, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the attack, stating that the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, Natanz Nuclear Facility, and an unnamed site in Isfahan had been targeted using a combination of air-dropped GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from U.S. submarines.
President Trump claimed the operation was a “spectacular military success,” saying, “Fordow is gone… All planes are now outside of Iranian airspace. A full payload of bombs was dropped on the primary site.” According to CNN, six B-2 bombers were involved, dropping a total of 12 MOPs on Fordow alone—delivering over 180 tonnes of ordnance.
This marks the first time the GBU-57 has been used in combat. The precision-guided bombs are designed to destroy deeply buried targets, such as fortified nuclear sites, and only the B-2 bomber is capable of carrying them.
The Pentagon has not yet released an official statement detailing the extent of damage, but Iranian state media confirmed that parts of the Fordow facility were hit at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran described the strike as “a barbaric act that violated international law”, though it added that radiation monitoring showed no signs of contamination at the affected sites.
Iran’s Crisis Management Headquarters reported “no danger to the people of Qom and the surrounding area”, where Fordow is located.
Trump’s unilateral action drew mixed reactions in Washington. Most Congressional Republicans expressed support for the strikes, while many Democrats and some Republicans questioned their legality, arguing that the President had not obtained congressional authorisation for military action.
The broader international response has been one of concern, with analysts warning of unpredictable Iranian retaliation. The region had already been on high alert following Israeli airstrikes on 12 June. U.S. bases in the Middle East had been bracing for reprisals, and B-2 bombers were recently deployed to Guam in anticipation of potential operations.
Despite earlier signals that diplomatic options remained on the table, Trump’s decision appears to have been influenced by urgent appeals from Israeli leaders, who reportedly told the White House they could not wait for extended negotiations.
ABC News reported that the attack closely mirrored a joint U.S.-Israeli exercise conducted in 2024, which simulated a strike on hardened nuclear sites. Axios noted that top Republicans in Congress were briefed in advance of the operation, but top Democrats were not.
Iran’s nuclear programme has long been a point of contention between Tehran and Western powers. While the U.S. intelligence community has previously stated it does not assess Iran to be actively pursuing nuclear weapons, Trump has maintained that Iran must be prevented from acquiring such capability at all costs.
President Trump warned in a Truth Social post following the strikes: “Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”
Security was heightened in major U.S. cities in response to fears of retaliatory attacks. Meanwhile, Israel temporarily closed its airspace, signalling concern about escalation.
Those pesky non – existent WMD creating difficulties again as a weak and out of his depth US president tries to make himself look tough on a world stage.
You are totally correct. It would be much better if the West let Iran develop nuclear weapons to mount on their missiles.
You see, the thing is, I recall hearing the very same justifications over 20 years ago about Iraq. ( remember the 45 min claim ?). It was complete bullshit back then and there’s little evidence that it isn’t bullshit today about Iran. We spent countless billions in lives and treasure searching for WMD in Iraq, are we about to do the same again? And on the issue of ‘regime change ‘, look how well that went in Syria, Iraq, Libya etc.
Guess the 2 states that do have nuclear weapons mounted on their missiles and regularly threaten the West harm……Russia and N. Korea, 2 states led by dictators who Trump is in thrall to.
A weak and incompetent Trump who hasn’t the first clue about what he’s doing, ,surrounded by equally incompetent, ignorant and unqualified advisors and officials will not bring peace. Weakness never does.
The difference is that Iran has made specific threats against another nation regarding nuclear weapons. Cannot recall Saddam doing anything similar. Agree re Iraq, a foreign policy disaster, however not destroying Iran’s nuclear program would be much worse (particularly if Israel felt it had to act). Regime change in Iran would be desirable but is not essential.
And as others have said Iran had openly confirmed that they have an enrichment program that is up and running.
Albeit they claim to have stopped at 60% and not gone further.
Given that you essentially run the 60% through a similar rig repeatedly until you get to 90%+ then there isn’t a lot stopping them.
This is a stupid comparison anyway. The intel was always shaky for the Iraq war and many countries questioned it. This time NATO says it’s true, the IAEA have gone in an independently tested it and confirmed the enrichment level, and Iran itself has said they are enriching and will continue to do so.
Who else needs to confirm it? Comparing it to Iraq is such a surface level comparison that lacks any critical thinking.
And yet US intel community says they aren’t developing a bomb.
We do know that Saddam had Chemical weapons and used them on the Kurds.
Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program before the Gulf War 1,
it was mostly dismantled and destroyed under UN supervision following the war.
But the UN inspectors were obstructed on several occasions,
so this led to gaps in the UN inspectors knowledge and a lot of doubts which were used as the excuse for Gulf war 2
We have seen pictures of Iraqi Calutrons being moved around post Gulf war 1.
But I agree the Casus belli for Gulf war 2 was exaggerated or misguided.
I would say Iran was much closer to getting a Nuke than Iraq ever was.
Regardless their biggest mistake was to keep threatening Israel with annihilation.
The open threat of genocide is a thing in international law too…..it could be construed as a reasonable reason for an act of war to prevent the whole of a population becoming a casualty…..and a I have said above Iran did release video footage or enrichment and openly claimed to have a large amount of 60% enriched uranium.
This is not dodgy dossier stuff this is simply accepting what Iran’s government have clearly stated repeatedly. Backed up by UN inspectors who were clearly getting concerned about what the real peaceful purpose of all of this enrichment actually was as you don’t need 60% enrichment for a power station….
Don’t think so. The Iranians were enriching uranium to U235 not U238 needed for nuclear power.
The ONLY reason to enrich to U235 is for nuclear weapons production.
President Trump has done what was required. Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons as they would most certainly use it against the west via their proxies or as a direct attack from Iran.
Iran let’s not forget are not our friends, they are our enemies.
They supported the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents, they trained and supported HAMAS prior to their assault on Israel that led to the current Israeli Palestine conflict.
They supported Hezbollah and their rocket forces
They equipped trained and supplied the Houthis to attack commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea.
They have consistently stated they will destroy the west and kill all those they view as infidels in a holy Islamist crusade.
These people are not innocents, they are a state that sponsors terrorism.
Additionally they have trained and equipped Russia with tens of thousands of drones, artillery ammunition, small arms, rockets and missiles to aid their illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Iran was part of a forming quad axis of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Now Iran will be degraded by Israel and to a lesser extent the USA so they are militarily and industrially reduced as a threat for more than a generation.
No increase in background radiation being reported yet by international atomic energy agency (IEAE).
Iran has been bombed and there might be a push for regime change. Nothing of the sort for north korea… Let’s see the results in coming years for dissemination.
Of all of the things to happen during my birthday…
What does Iran have left, short of domestic terrorism, that they can retaliate with? THAAD and Israeli strikes have depleted their ballistic missile reserves and they now can’t make the bomb.
Sejill missiles can be fired at US bases in the middle east, they’ve only used one of those so far.
They have played down the significance of the strike already, giving themselves some breathing room at home and reducing the need to retaliate directly.
If they retaliate and kill US servicemen then they are in for a battering, they know this full well. I suspect they will avoid direct confrontation but will do something to look tough in the eyes of Iran’s populace.
Watch the seas. The IRGC could have its revenge by blocking the Persian Gulf.
I suspect they still have plenty of shore-based anti-ship missiles, as well as small attack craft to harass ships
Great. That’s what we want and need
Seems UKDJ what part of a Psy ops campaign to make Iran believe that B2’s were being moved to Diego Garcia when they were actually flying straight to Iran. The Times reported on this yesterday quoting UKDJ.
AAR was moved to DG.
That was the feint.
So the assumptions was that the B2’s were going to join the pre positioned assets.
I agree it was a deception operation combined with the Tangerine’s Two Week deadline.
Who knows the Tangerine may have looked at a Twit and changed policy sat on the can?
I have to agree that this was a window of opportunity demonstrate to those who believe that defeating the West in Afghanistan meant that they could also win a conventional war.
It is the same fundamental mistake that Hitler made with his underground V1/2/3 facilities…..they are in a fixed location….every location has a weakness…..the US has had a while to go one better than Barnes Wallis…..there is a reason that Tempest needs big payloads as we don’t have a seriously heavy bomb truck since Vulcan went OoS.
Yes, however now we have lost track of a large amount of high enriched uranium which is now no doubt moving around secret locations in a state know for a terrorism and possibly on the brink of falling apart in a civil war.
Some how I don’t feel more safe.
As long as those ‘secret locations’ do not have the advanced equipment and clean rooms needed to assemble a nuke, you will be safe.
I assume they would attempt to test their first device too, and that would be detected.
I’m talking about an improvised dirty device. That’s a much bigger threat than some Uranium gun type bomb that Iran has no men’s to deliver.
The IAEA states it no longer knows where the uranium is.
They didn’t have a large amount of Uranium U238. Only about 60% enriched, that’s not enough to make a fission warhead or weapon. Potentially a dirty bomb. As long as the centrifuges, heavy water manufacturing and enriching reactors are now off line, destroyed or buried under tons of collapsed blast damaged tunnels then that’s mission accomplished. I’d imagine the USAF will return again, possibly tonight once battle damage assessment is completed to mop up anything left that might prove useful.
Hopefully the Iranian nuclear weapons ambition is curtailed for a generation.
Israel will be looking at the MOP equipped B2s and be thinking they need a comparable capability.
Got to say the UK could probably use a small strategic heavy bomber force as part of an increased conventional deterrent.
The B2s however were noticeably held back until the Israeli air force had guaranteed air superiority over Iran.
If only TACO was to take the same approach with Russia he might actually be able to stop a war!
Well its been a long time coming, but with Iran being best buddies with Putin I guess it dose not need its own enrichment programme, so just like the North Korean’s they will get the bomb via its support for Putin and his war on Ukraine.
Thing is that anyone with some common sense and physics and engineering smarts can make a ‘device’. This is all 1940’s published physics and engineering.
Now, whether NK can master miniaturising the device or not is quite another matter entirely.
It is easy enough to make a massive Gen1 bomb but you cannot deliver that on a rocket.
Could be delivered by boat aile or so offshore from a coastal city. Who knows.
..a mile or so…
What is most interesting about this..
The entire European nato Community, a community that fully supported the US war on terror and spent many many 10s of billions of dollars and suffered thousands of casualties cannot even ask the simplest thing, for US to keep on providing support to Ukraine..without being castigated and insulted and the US doing the opposite.. and yet Isreal which essentially spends most of its time being horrible about the US and sucking up free aid like there is no tomorrow with no return ( you never saw an Israeli solder in Iraq or Afghanistan) and yet Isreal can start a war and the US will essentially immediately without any requirements or even treaty need jump into the fight….. I do sometimes wonder what the hell Israeli has on the US or has told the US… because when Israeli even indicates a jump is needed the US is jumping, and when the US looks like it may be getting a bit antsy Israeli always seems to bring it back in line.
In the back of my mind I do wonder if Isreal holds the Sampson option over the US and the U.S. believes it so much it naturally falls into line.
Now don’t get me wrong I’m not actually arguing for or against these strikes.. as I don’t know the intel, so cannot make a judgement on the need or not.. what I’m saying is Isreal led and the US followed..its like a child lead a bull by the ring in its nose.
Pretty simple: 7,5 millions jewish people in the US, hence a massive influence on electorate. Any US politician needs to factor that in. A French diplomat once Said the 2 most influential ambassadors in washington in comparison of their country size/power are the irish and the Israeli one: thanks to electorate.
2.4 percent is massive?
It’s enough to swing elections.
It is as simple as this – a window of opportunity that might not present itself again one Iran got Chinese AAW systems from Chine.
US knows exactly how F16 gets on with S300/400 so they have gained knowledge from UKR.
The Israelis have demonstrated for some time how useless these systems are and how they can launch raids with no losses.
So there is a defined low risk opportunity to shut this thing down and stop nuclear weapons proliferation into the hands of a very unstable bunch who might export it to cause trouble.
As to Russia stepping into the breach that isn’t so likely as the Iranians now know that the Russian systems and electronics are close to useless against Israeli systems and would likely assume that the nuclear engineering had also been penetrated.
Also Russia doesn’t really trust Iran as it has had its own ‘issues’ close to home
Indeed, it’s more about the fact, Isreal lead and the US followed. The U.S. suddenly deciding Iran was at threshold and attacking it would not have surprised me..but Israel has wider geopolitical answer domestic reasons.
Isreal demonstrated a window of opportunity.
Trump calculated that he could do what his predecessors chickened out of doing in spite of creating the weapons that he deployed.
The US has becomes Israel’s poodle.
Trump came out now and says NATO countries should spend 5% on defence but the USA won’t be joining them. So by his ascertain the US is not a NATO country.
Seems pretty obvious that the UK made clear that Diego Garcia could not be used for the operation that why the bombers moved.
I just hope Iran doesn’t target UK forces in its retaliation so we don’t have to get involved.
Hopefully the nut jobs in Tehran are clear minded enough to notice the giant chasm between US and ENATO foreign policy.
Let MAGA send their boys to die in BiBis war.
It is as simple as this:
Secular democracy vs Islamic Jurisprudence
Which one do you think the US (and most of the West) wants to see prevail?
Is that because there is a strategic element to all of this and world leaders have for some time known there were problems ahead? In Trump’s first term he was calling out Western Europe for freeloading from the US. This has been proven repeatedly to be correct and true.
Israel has made huge investments in defending itself and has sold very high end military tech to the US and ourselves.
As to why they weren’t boots on ground in Afghanistan, come on, you should know what those optics would have played out as, and they also had major military issues to deal with at home didn’t they?
Trump’s been droning on for days about it. I’d imagine anything that’s not bolted down was moved out of those sites days ago.
Who honestly didn’t see this coming?
Let’s just make sure that we stay well clear of this mess.
I hope so but we might not have that choice given Iran has threatened UK and French bases in the Middle-east as well as US bases.
When Netanyahu calls Trump picks up immediately.. but when it’s Ukraine, he’d rather call his friend putin instead
I support the strikes, Iran is not a nation fit to have nuclear weapons and one cannot take a chance.
But….I sympathise with the view of Posse top of thread. We’ve heard all this before.
But this time, with underground facilities and enrichment not needed but for a bomb, it’s not like Iraq.
I’m glad that no other targets were hit. Leave it at that.
And Europe and the UK need to stay out of it.
The Iranians must have moved out their enriched nuclear material from the bunkers months ago in anticipation as there is nno indication of any leaking radioactivity.