Seven B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers dropped 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites. All 14 bombs hit their target.
However, since most of the primary targets were underground, it's unknown how badly the Iranian nuclear program was crippled.
“There are clear indications of impacts but as for the assessment of the degree of damage underground on this we cannot pronounce ourselves,” said the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi. “It can be important. It can be significant. But no one, no one, neither us, nobody else, could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”
Before and after photos of the Fordow enrichment site are startling. The mountainside has been turned into a moonscape.
See the difference?
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) June 22, 2025
Below is a comparison of imagery before & after the U.S. strikes revealing changes to the terrain above the Fordow Nuclear Facility. Look closely. pic.twitter.com/oFgF2qS5nM
Fordow: BEFORE and AFTER 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Cyb5zSYNAN
— MAGA Kitty (@SaveUSAKitty) June 22, 2025
Related: Trump's Decision to Bomb Iran Exposes the Failures of Previous U.S. Leadership at Highest Level
How far Iran's nuclear bomb program was set back is the real question. Considering how close the Iranians were to being able to manufacture an atomic bomb (at worst, a matter of weeks), it will depend in large part on how much of their equipment is salvageable.
Excavation will go slowly. If, as Donald Trump has suggested, the enrichment lab was virtually destroyed, Iran will be starting over as far as building the centrifuge machines to enrich uranium. One improvement they would gain in this respect is that every new individual machine (there were more than 3,000 at Fordow before the bombing) will be of the most advanced design: the IR-6 centrifuges. Before the bombing, the IR-6 machines made up less than half the centrifuges at Fordow.
Rebuilding Fordow will not be easy for the Iranians. Much of the site's natural protection was destroyed in the bombing. While concrete and steel are good for protecting military assets, a couple of million tons of solid granite is much better. Iran may be forced to start over somewhere else.
David Albright, an expert on Iran’s nuclear program, who heads the Institute of Science and International Security, said the impact points of the bombs appear to be very near the location of the ventilation shafts into the underground halls. Destroying the ventilation shafts could be a way to do major damage underground. Each of the dozen GBU-57 bunker busters that hit the Fordow carried four tons of TNT, according to Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.
Soon after the strikes, President Trump said they had “obliterated” Fordow and Iran’s other core nuclear sites.
“I would place very low confidence in assessments made from open source imagery,” said Neil Quilliam, associate fellow at the international affairs think tank Chatham House.
Obliteration is not necessary. The damage done to the site, as well as to the only other uranium enrichment site in Iran at Natanz, has certainly delayed Iran's ability to construct a nuclear bomb by several years.
Another factor to consider is the cost. If Iran starts printing billions of dollars to pay for rebuilding their enrichment program, the more than 35% inflation rate already being experienced by the Iranian people will skyrocket, bringing with it civil unrest. That's the last thing the mullahs want.
There is speculation that Iran removed 900 lbs of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Fordow before the strikes. This HEU was enriched to 60%, for which there is no commercial application. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) doesn't think the HEU was removed.
Iran may have moved nuclear material and any stockpiled uranium out of Fordow in the days prior to the attack. However, Maxar satellite imagery from June 19 shows significant activity at Fordow consistent with defensive measures rather than material transport. This includes 16 dump trucks parked outside the underground tunnel entrances to the centrifuge facility. These dump trucks seem to indicate Iran taking defensive actions prior to the attack. Satellite imagery shows that all six entrances were sealed with rock and sand prior to the U.S. raid.
The Iranians used to store the HEU at the facility in Isfahan. That lab was also destroyed in the strike, on the assumption that if Iran did move the HEU, it could very well have been there.
The bottom line is that while Fordow was not "obliterated," the damage done to the site is so severe that it will be years before Iran nears the nuclear breakout they were so close to achieving before the bombing.
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