US Strikes Iranian Nuclear Sites Amid Rising Tensions
US President Donald Trump says American warplanes have bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel.
“Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal,” the president said in a brief televised address to the American people.
“But if peace doesn’t come quickly we will go to those other targets with precision, speed and skill.”
One of the targets was Fordo, a uranium enrichment plant hidden in a remote mountainside that is vital to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We do not yet know the full scale of the damage at the facility.
Israeli officials say they were in “full co-ordination” with the US in planning these strikes.
The US contacted Iran through diplomatic channels on Saturday to say the air strikes were all it intended to do and that “regime change efforts” were “not planned”, according to US officials speaking to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
Iran could respond by targeting US military assets in the region. Its officials had earlier warned that any US attack risked a regional war and they would retaliate.
The whole issue started when Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of Iranian nuclear and military targets on 13 June. It said its ambition was to dismantle its nuclear programme, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would soon be able to produce a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are peaceful. In retaliation, Tehran launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. The two countries have continued exchanging strikes since, in an air war which has now lasted more than a week.
Trump has long said that he is opposed to Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. Israel is widely believed to have them, although it neither confirms nor denies this.
In March, US national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard said that while Iran had increased its uranium stockpile to unprecedented levels, it was not building a nuclear weapon – an assessment that Trump recently said was “wrong”.
On the campaign trail, Trump had criticised past US administrations for engaging in “stupid endless wars” in the Middle East, and he vowed to keep America out of foreign conflicts.
The US and Iran were in nuclear talks at the time of Israel’s surprise attack. Only two days ago, Trump said he would give Iran two weeks to enter into substantial negotiations before striking – but that timeline turned out to be much shorter.
The US says it hit three nuclear sites – at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
Fordo is hidden away in a mountainside south of Tehran, and is believed to be deeper underground than the Channel Tunnel connecting the UK and France.
Fordo’s depth below the Earth’s surface has made it difficult to reach with Israel’s weaponry. Only the US was considered to have a “bunker buster” bomb strong and large enough to destroy Fordo.
That American bomb is called the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It weighs 13,000kg (30,000lb), and is able to penetrate about 18m of concrete or 61m of earth before exploding, according to experts.
Fordo tunnels are thought to be 80m to 90m below the surface, so the MOP is not guaranteed to be successful, but it is the only bomb that could come close.
US media reports say MOPs were used in the strikes.
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