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CNN
7 hours ago
- Politics
- CNN
US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target
Washington CNN — The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's largest nuclear sites last weekend because the site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective, the US' top general told senators during a briefing on Thursday. The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan's underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. US B2 bombers dropped over a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites. But Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. The classified briefing to lawmakers was conducted by Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. A spokesperson for Caine declined to comment, noting that he cannot comment on the chairman's classified briefing to Congress. During the briefing, Ratcliffe told lawmakers that the US intelligence community assesses that the majority of Iran's enriched nuclear material is buried at Isfahan and Fordow, according to a US official. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN on Thursday night after receiving the briefing that some of Iran's capabilities 'are so far underground that we can never reach them. So they have the ability to move a lot of what has been saved into areas where there's no American bombing capacity that can reach it.' An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country's nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. The Trump officials who briefed lawmakers this week sidestepped questions about the whereabouts of Iran's stockpile of already-enriched uranium. President Donald Trump again claimed Friday that nothing was moved from the three Iranian sites before the US military operation. But Republican lawmakers emerged from the classified briefings on Thursday acknowledging that the US military strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran's nuclear materials. But they argued that doing so was not part of the military's mission. 'There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission,' Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN. 'My understanding is most of it's still there. So we need a full accounting. That's why Iran has to come to the table directly with us, so the (International Atomic Energy Agency) can account for every ounce of enriched uranium that's there. I don't think it's going out of the country, I think it's at the facilities.' 'The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain particular aspects of their nuclear program. Those were eliminated. To get rid of the nuclear material was not part of the mission,' GOP Rep. Greg Murphy told CNN. 'Here's where we're at: the program was obliterated at those three sites. But they still have ambitions,' said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. 'I don't know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists. But it wasn't part of the targets there.' '(The sites) were obliterated. Nobody can use them anytime soon,' Graham also said. Weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Jeffrey Lewis told CNN that commercial satellite images show that Iran has accessed the tunnels at Isfahan. 'There were a moderate number of vehicles present at Isfahan on June 26 and at least one of the tunnel entrances was cleared of obstructions by mid-morning June 27,' Lewis said. 'If Iran's stockpile of (highly enriched uranium) was still in the tunnel when Iran sealed the entrances, it may be elsewhere now.' Additional satellite imagery captured on June 27 by Planet Labs show the entrance to the tunnels were open at the time, according to Lewis. The preliminary DIA assessment noted that the nuclear sites' above ground structures were moderately to severely damaged, CNN has reported. That damage could make it a lot harder for Iran to access any enriched uranium that does remain underground, sources said, something that Graham alluded to on Thursday. 'These strikes did a lot of damage to those three facilities,' Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, told CNN on Thursday night. 'But Iran still has the know-how to put back together a nuclear program. And if they still have that enriched material, and if they still have centrifuges, and if they still have the capability to very quickly move those centrifuges into what we call a cascade, we have not set back that program by years. We have set it back by months.' Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz.
Time of India
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Operation Midnight Hammer: 'Bunker-busters' not used on Iran's Isfahan nuclear site, top US general tells senators; cites target depth
The United States military did not use the "bunker-buster" bombs on Iran's Isfahan nuclear facility during last week's Operation Midnight Hammer, chairman joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, told senators during a classified briefing. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The facility is so deep that the bomb - actual name Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) - likely would have not been effective, the general informed senators on Thursday, CNN . US officials believe that Isfahan's underground structures contain nearly 60 per cent of the Islamic Republic's enriched nuclear stockpile, which Tehran would need in order to ever produce nukes. Only Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Isfahan. On the other hand, the B-2 Spirit bombers dropped more than a dozen bunker-busters on the other two targets - Fordow and Natanz. The classified session was held by Caine, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe, director, CIA. During the briefing, Ratcliffe said that the US intelligence community assesses that the majority of Iran's enriched nuclear material is buried at Isfahan and Fordow, according to an official. Following the strikes, a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency the attack did not destroy the core components of Iran's nuclear programme, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set it back by months. The assessment was disputed by members of the Donald Trump administration. President Trump has repeatedly asserted that Iran's nuclear programme was "obliterated."
Wall Street Journal
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
WSJ Opinion: Trump, the Media and a Cease-Fire Amid Iran Talks
As talks with Iran get underway, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth condemns the news media's misleading coverage of the bunker bomb strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, amid a mission briefing from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine. Photo:/Kevin Wolf/AP
Business Insider
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Insider
Satellite images appear to show excavators and bulldozers at work at Iran's bombed-out nuclear site
New satellite images appear to show Iran starting excavations at one of its nuclear sites hit by US bombs. In the images, Iran looks to be filling craters at Fordow and digging out access roads. Fordow was one of three facilities targeted during the US strikes on Iran's nuclear program last weekend. New satellite images show construction equipment at Fordow, one of Iran's bombed-out nuclear sites. Efforts appear to be underway to repair damage and dig out new access paths. In the images, which were captured on Friday by the US commercial satellite imaging company Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider, new activity was documented near the tunnel entrances, as well as the points where heavy US bombs struck Fordow over the weekend. One image captured excavators and bulldozers apparently moving dirt near craters and holes on the northern mountain ridge at Fordow. The main strike points for the bombs, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busters, per the Pentagon, were exhaust shafts that allowed the weapons to penetrate deep into the underground complex. Other images capture what looks like construction equipment digging new access roads to the facility, as well as engaging in efforts to repair damage on the main access road. Iran may be attempting to restore access to the underground site in order to assess the condition of it and its equipment, though that's not explicitly clear. A Royal United Services Institute report from March of this year noted that if there wasn't a long-term strike campaign that prevented Iran from doing so, "efforts to dig down to the facilities to re-establish access and supplies would likely begin almost immediately" after a strike on its nuclear program. With the recent ceasefire, US and Israeli efforts to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities have ended. President Donald Trump has said the strikes "completely obliterated" the facilities, and Israel has determined that the strikes set Iran's program back years. Fordow was one of three nuclear sites targeted by the US in the strikes last weekend aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear program. The US also struck Natanz and Isfahan, the first with air-dropped bombs like Fordow and the second with sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. The full damage to these sites and how degrading the strikes were to Iran's overall program, stockpiles of enriched uranium, and equipment are unclear. The extent of the damage to the program is still being assessed. RUSI experts previously speculated that a crippling strike on the Fordow fuel enrichment plant "would likely require multiple impacts at the same aiming point to have a good chance of penetrating the facility." At a Pentagon press briefing Thursday, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared that during the "Operation Midnight Hammer" strikes, MOP bunker-buster bombs were dropped one after another down exhaust shafts. The general also shared that Defense Threat Reduction Agency personnel spent roughly 15 years studying Fordow and working on how best to destroy Iran's nuclear program. US President Donald Trump has said Iran will never be able to rebuild the facilities. That is unclear. Other US and Israeli officials, as well as nuclear arms experts, have said the strikes set Iran's ambitions back by a few months to years, but this is not the same as determining whether Iran can still build nuclear weapons. It's difficult to bomb a country's knowledge out of existence, and there have been assessments that Iran may now be more eager to develop a nuclear weapon than before. The US strikes came after Israel launched a new campaign earlier this month intended to degrade Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran argues is for civilian use. The US had been seeking to reach a nuclear deal with Iran through negotiation; however, it opted for an alternative approach this past weekend, hitting Iran instead and then calling for peace. In retaliation for the US strikes, Iran fired ballistic missiles at a large US air base in Qatar this week. The US said none of Iran's missiles hit the base. US leadership has said it had advanced notice about the strikes. A ceasefire has since gone into effect, stopping the exchanges of fire for the time being.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target
The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's largest nuclear sites last weekend because the site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective, the US' top general told senators during a briefing on Thursday. The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan's underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. US B2 bombers dropped over a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites. But Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. The classified briefing to lawmakers was conducted by Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Spokespeople for Caine did not return requests for comment. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN on Thursday night after receiving the briefing that some of Iran's capabilities 'are so far underground that we can never reach them. So they have the ability to move a lot of what has been saved into areas where there's no American bombing capacity that can reach it.' An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country's nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. The Trump officials who briefed lawmakers this week sidestepped questions about the whereabouts of Iran's stockpile of already-enriched uranium. President Donald Trump again claimed Friday that nothing was moved from the three Iranian sites before the US military operation. But Republican lawmakers emerged from the classified briefings on Thursday acknowledging that the US military strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran's nuclear materials. But they argued that doing so was not part of the military's mission. 'There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission,' Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN. 'My understanding is most of it's still there. So we need a full accounting. That's why Iran has to come to the table directly with us, so the (International Atomic Energy Agency) can account for every ounce of enriched uranium that's there. I don't think it's going out of the country, I think it's at the facilities.' 'The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain particular aspects of their nuclear program. Those were eliminated. To get rid of the nuclear material was not part of the mission,' GOP Rep. Greg Murphy told CNN. 'Here's where we're at: the program was obliterated at those three sites. But they still have ambitions,' said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. 'I don't know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists. But it wasn't part of the targets there.' '(The sites) were obliterated. Nobody can use them anytime soon,' Graham also said. Weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Jeffrey Lewis told CNN that commercial satellite images show that Iran has accessed the tunnels at Isfahan. 'There were a moderate number of vehicles present at Isfahan on June 26 and at least one of the tunnel entrances was cleared of obstructions by mid-morning June 27,' Lewis said. 'If Iran's stockpile of (highly enriched uranium) was still in the tunnel when Iran sealed the entrances, it may be elsewhere now.' Additional satellite imagery captured on June 27 by Planet Labs show the entrance to the tunnels were open at the time, according to Lewis. The preliminary DIA assessment noted that the nuclear sites' above ground structures were moderately to severely damaged, CNN has reported. That damage could make it a lot harder for Iran to access any enriched uranium that does remain underground, sources said, something that Graham alluded to on Thursday. 'These strikes did a lot of damage to those three facilities,' Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, told CNN on Thursday night. 'But Iran still has the know-how to put back together a nuclear program. And if they still have that enriched material, and if they still have centrifuges, and if they still have the capability to very quickly move those centrifuges into what we call a cascade, we have not set back that program by years. We have set it back by months.' Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz. CNN's Manu Raju contributed to this report.
