- by foxnews
- 20 Aug 2025
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the above-ground labs had previously been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, destroying the plant's electrical infrastructure. Meanwhile, satellite imagery following the U.S.'s decision to drop two MOPs on Natanz show two craters located where the site's underground enrichment facilities are reportedly located. However, it is still not clear if the U.S. attacks completely destroyed the underground nuclear infrastructure.
Either way, Striker noted, the significant damage to Iran's Natanz facility will create a "bottleneck" in the country's supply chain for weapons-grade uranium, which will significantly impact Iran's nuclear weapon-making capabilities.
The third site targeted by the U.S.'s airstrikes was Iran's Isfahan nuclear enrichment facility, but MOPs were not used at that site. Instead, the U.S. used Tomahawk cruise missiles, which the IAEA confirmed caused significant damage. Satellite imagery reportedly shows Isfahan's above-ground facilities were taken out, but it remains unclear the extent of the damage to the site's underground sections.
"Having to move these assets to new facilities likely degrades Iran's immediate ability to sprint to a nuclear weapon but makes it likely that Iran will go to great lengths to conceal their new location," Bumbaugh said. "This movement of nuclear infrastructure or material would make follow-on strikes difficult if intelligence is unable to find all of the new hidden facilities."
"There's a lot of alarmism right now about whether Iran could sprint to a bomb," Stricker added. "Israel has done so much damage to their ability to make nuclear weapons [and] the weaponization supply chain. So the facilities, the components that [Iran] would need, the equipment, and then up to 14 nuclear scientists, I think, if they did want to build a bomb quickly, they're really stymieing - they don't have access to all of all that, all of those assets they would need. And so, I think in the short to medium term, we don't need to be overly concerned that they could get there."
An Air Force spokesperson did confirm to Fox News Digital that, in total, U.S. forces deployed 75 "precision guided weapons" targeting Iran over the weekend, including 14 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators.
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