DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — It was an unprecedented attack years in the making, with some last-minute misdirection meant to give the operation a powerful element of surprise. U.S. pilots dropped 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran, delivering what American military leaders believe is a knockout blow to a nuclear program that Israel views as an existential threat and has been pummeling for more than a week. American sailors bolstered the surprise mission by firing dozens of cruise missiles from a submarine toward at least one other site.
Dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, U.S. officials say the plan was characterized by a “precision strike” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program,” even as they acknowledged an assessment was ongoing. For its part, Iran denied that any significant damage had been done, and the Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate.
Taking off from the U.S. heartland, B-2 stealth bombers delivered a total of 420,000 pounds of explosives, aided by an armada of refueling tankers and fighter jets — some of which launched their own weapons. U.S. officials said Iran neither detected the inbound fusillade, nor mustered a shot at the stealthy American jets.
The operation relied on a series of deceptive tactics and decoys to maintain the secrecy, U.S. officials said hours after the attack, which was preceded by nine days of Israeli attacks that debilitated Iran’s military leadership and air defenses.
A decoy plan
Even before the planes took off, elements of misdirection were already in play. After setting parts of the plan in motion, Trump publicly announced Thursday that he’d make a decision within two weeks on whether to strike Iran — ostensibly to allow additional time for negotiations, but in actuality masking the impending attack.
One group of B-2 stealth bombers traveled west from Missouri on Saturday as decoys, drawing the attention of amateur plane spotters, government officials and some media as they headed toward a U.S. air base in the Pacific. At the same time, seven other B-2s carrying two “bunker buster” bombs apiece flew eastward, keeping communications to a minimum so as not to draw any attention.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Sunday’s briefing that it was all “part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise” and that only “an extremely small number of planners and key leaders” knew about it in Washington and Florida, where U.S. Central Command is based.
After 18 hours of furtive flying that required aerial refueling, the armed B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, arrived on time and without detection in the Eastern Mediterranean, from where they launched their attack runs. Before crossing into Iran, the B-2s were escorted by stealthy U.S. fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft.
A graphic released by the Pentagon showed the flight route as passing over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. It was unclear whether those countries were notified of the U.S. overflight in advance. Most U.S. lawmakers were also kept in the dark, with some Republicans saying they were provided a brief heads-up by the White House before the strike.
“Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Sunday.
US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites only set back program by months, Pentagon report says
"As the US bombs Iran and enters another war, China is the likely winner "With ally Iran under attack, Hezbollah stays out of the fray for now" Related: Iranian opposition supporters grapple with US and Israeli regime change plans https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176346154"
See also:
Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months,... https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176358377
Being closer to is not proof of intent. [...]In September 2017, Iran’s naval command said that the country’s nuclear agency was beginning to produce nuclear reactors for fueling and propulsion systems.16 However, many analysts assert that manufacturing a nuclear reactor for submarine use is beyond Iran’s current capabilities and is simply a response to increased U.S. sanctions after the U.S. withdrawal from the JPCOA.17 P - Iran is also experimenting with submersibles, unmanned vessels, and other submarines. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176355381
Findings by Defense Intelligence Agency suggest Trump’s declaration that sites were ‘obliterated’ may be overstated
Hugo Lowell in Washington Wed 25 Jun 2025 06.49 AEST
An initial classified US assessment of Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.
The report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – concluded key components of the nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months.
The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
The findings by the DIA, which were based on a preliminary battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, suggests Trump’s declaration about the sites being “obliterated” may have been overstated.
Trump said in his televised address on Saturday night immediately after the operation that the US had completely destroyed Iran’s enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, the facility buried deep underground, and at Isfahan, where enrichment was being stored.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Trump said in his address from the White House.
While the DIA report was only an initial assessment, one of the people said if the intelligence on the ground was already finding within days that Fordow in particular was not destroyed, later assessments could suggest even less damage might have been inflicted.
Long regarded as the most well-protected of Iran’s nuclear sites, the uranium-enrichment facilities at Fordow are buried beneath the Zagros mountains. Reports have suggested that the site was constructed beneath 45-90 metres (145-300ft) of bedrock, largely limestone and dolomite.
Media coverage of the DIA assessment appeared to anger Trump, who on Tuesday evening accused news outlets of demeaning the military strike by saying it only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months.
“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!” Trump posted in all caps on his Truth Social platform.
[ Insert: Trump's ego-rocket quickly becomes an unspectacular splash, a very expensive one at that. And wow, on of his biggest public dummy spits ever. What Trump’s f-bomb rage really says about his relationship with Netanyahu In an extraordinary display of fury, Donald Trump lashes out at his closest ally Israel: a mark of what might be to come, writes chief international correspondent Bel Trew Wednesday 25 June 2025 05:04 BST https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-f-bomb-netanyahu-israel-iran-ceasefire-b2776399.html ]
The White House also disputed the intelligence assessment, which was first reported by CNN. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, admitted on Sunday that Washington did not know where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranian was, saying: “we are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel”.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday that the IAEA could no longer account for Iran’s stockpile of 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity.
The Guardian revealed last Wednesday that top political appointees at the Pentagon had been briefed at the start of Trump’s second term that the 30,000lb “bunker buster” GBU-57 bombs meant to be used on Fordow would not completely destroy the facility.
In that briefing, in January, officials were told by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon that developed the GBU-57 that the bombs would not penetrate deep enough underground and only a tactical nuclear weapon would wipe out Fordow.
The US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities involved B2 bombers dropping 12 GBU-57s on Fordow and two GBU-57s on Natanz. A US navy submarine then launched roughly 30 Tomahawk missiles on Isfahan, US defense officials said at a news conference Sunday.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth repeated Trump’s claim at the news conference that the sites had been “obliterated”, but the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, who helped oversee the operation, was more measured in his remarks.
Caine said that all three of the nuclear sites had “sustained severe damage and destruction” but cautioned that the final battle-damage assessment for the military operation was still to come.
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