What Satellite Images Reveal About the US Bombing of Iran's Nuclear Sites

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When nan United States bombed Iran successful nan early hours of Sunday section time, it targeted 3 accommodation cardinal to nan country’s atomic ambitions: nan Fordow uranium enrichment plant, nan Natanz atomic facility, and nan Isfahan atomic exertion center. Newly released outer images show nan effect of nan attack—at least, what tin beryllium seen connected nan ground.

The brunt of nan bombing focused connected Fordow, wherever US forces dropped a twelve GBU-57 monolithic ordnance penetrators arsenic portion of its “Midnight Hammer” operation. These 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs are designed to penetrate arsenic heavy arsenic 200 feet into nan world earlier detonating. The Fordow analyzable is astir 260 feet underground.

That spread accounts for immoderate of nan uncertainty complete precisely really overmuch harm nan Fordow tract sustained. President Donald Trump shared a station connected his Truth Social level pursuing nan onslaught that declared “Fordow is gone,” and later said successful a televised reside that “Iran’s cardinal atomic enrichment accommodation person been wholly and wholly obliterated.” His ain military, however, was somewhat much circumspect astir nan result successful a Sunday greeting briefing. “It would beryllium measurement excessively early for maine to remark connected what whitethorn aliases whitethorn not still beryllium there,” said wide Dan Caine, president of nan Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Satellite imagery tin inherently only show you truthful overmuch astir a building that is situated truthful acold beneath nan aboveground of nan earth. But earlier and aft imagery is nan champion publically disposable accusation astir nan bombing’s impact.

A outer image from earlier nan US bombing of Fordow.

Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters

A outer image from aft nan US bombing of Fordow.

Photo: MAXAR Technologies/Handout via Reuters

“What we spot are six craters, 2 clusters of three, wherever location were 12 monolithic ordnance penetrators dropped,” says Jeffrey Lewis, head of nan East Asia Nonproliferation Program astatine nan Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “The thought is you deed nan aforesaid spot complete and complete again to benignant of excavation down.”

The circumstantial locations of those craters matter arsenic well, says Joseph Rodgers, lawman head and chap astatine nan Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project connected Nuclear Issues. While nan entranceway tunnels to nan Fordow analyzable look not to person been targeted, US bombs fell connected what are apt ventilation shafts, based connected outer images of early building astatine nan site.

“The logic that you’d want to target a ventilation shaft is that it’s a much nonstop way to nan halfway components of nan underground facility,” says Rodgers.

That nonstop way is particularly important fixed really heavy underground Fordow was built. The US subject relies connected “basically a machine model” of nan facility, says Lewis, which tells them “how overmuch unit it could return earlier it would severely harm everything wrong and possibly moreover illness nan facility.” By bombarding circumstantial targeted areas pinch aggregate munitions, nan US didn’t request bombs tin of penetrating nan afloat 260 feet to origin important damage.

“They’re astir apt not trying to get each nan measurement into nan facility. They’re astir apt conscionable trying to get adjacent capable to it and crush it pinch a shockwave,” Lewis says. “If you nonstop a large capable shockwave done that facility, it’s going to termination people, break stuff, harm nan integrity of it.”