President Trump announced strikes against three of Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities that he described as “totally obliterated.”
Dan Caine, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, the most senior US military official, went into details about the operation – which he revealed was called Midnight Hammer.
The US Air Force general laid out timings, as well as the weapons and equipment used.
He added initial battle damage assessments found all three sites suffered “extremely severe damage and destruction”.
Caine said that at midnight on Friday, a large B-2 strike package of bombers launched from the US.
To maintain surprise, some bombers flew west into the Pacific, something described as a “deception effort”.
During the 18-hour flight to the target, the US bombers underwent multiple refuellings.
“It was planned and executed across multiple domains and theatres with coordination that reflects our ability to project power globally with speed and precision at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” Caine said.
As the Operation Midnight Hammer bombers entered Iran, the US deployed “several decoys” and just before it did so, at 5pm EST, a US submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan.
14 bunker buster bombs used in Midnight Hammer
Caine went on: “At approximately 6.40pm EST, the lead B-2 dropped two GBU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons on the first of several Aim points at Fordo.
“As the president stated last night, the remaining bombers then hit their targets.”
More than 75 weapons were used in total, including 14 30,000lbs bunker buster bombs.
This marked their first operational use.
During questions, defence secretary Pete Hegseth said that he believed they had “achieved destruction of capabilities” at Fordow.
He said: “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here, we believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there.”
Iranian President Pezeshkian was…not happy:
Pezeshkian accused the US of being the “main cause” of Israel’s hostile actions against Iran, according to translated comments published on the IRNA news agency.
“Although they initially tried to conceal their role, after the decisive and deterrent response of our country’s armed forces and the observation of the Zionist regime’s [Israel’s] obvious inability, they inevitably came to the fore,” he said, referring to the US.
According to IRNA, Pezeshkian said despite the losses suffered by the country, it was now time to set aside differences and “activate the great capacities of the people”.
John Ismay points out that the bombing is problematic:
Welp.
That’s really impressive. The B-2 launched from an American base in the US, bombed Iran, and then flew back. Presumably there were a few flying refills along the way.
Which base, Dark? WHICH BASE?
Several refills, since they had to go east to west. West to east is shorter, but requires overflying countries that are unlikely to give permission.
There are many planes that need to ask permission. Surely the B-2 isn’t one of them.
Of course, this’d be a hell of a way to find out “oh, they figured it out”. I mean, if you were going to play that card, interrupting that particular mission would be when you’d do it.
And if you were wondering “where is a list of military bases within easy striking distance of Iran?”, the WaPo has you covered.
Hearing reports that Iran has “approved” closing the Straight Of Hormuz.
I believe it’s the Iranian parliament that has done the approving.
Wikipedia says: On 22 June, 2025, the Iranian parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, in response to recent U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The decision is pending approval by the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council.
So halfway approved at this point.
Fair point (by both you and Philip H). I stand corrected.
As has been noted elsewhere on the internet, approval from the Iranian legislative branch appears to be a necessary hurdle for the executive to commit acts of war. As opposed to Congress…
Granted, my occasional time in government has always been at the state level, as legislative staff, where we were constantly pushing legislators to avoid ceding power to the executive.
Somehow I doubt the Iranian legislative branch approves every act of terrorism. A standard criticism is their parliament has “limited” ability to supervise.
Which suggests this is political theater.
“Every act of terrorism.”
Huh…
Well it is still Pride Month after all.
Well, we’ve pretty clearly set the precedent that to avoid being attacked for developing nukes, you should develop nukes as fast and as secretly as possible.
The exact thing we were trying to avoid with the sanctions and inspection and the agreement we had with Iran, but, hey, Trump destroyed all of those first term.
The agreement Trump got rid of 8 years ago would have effectively made Iran a nuclear power after 15 years.
We monitor them closely for 10 years but DON’T GET RID OF IT’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM. So they’d continue to have the “right” to make almost-but-not-quite weapons grade material and to continue their weapons-program-in-all-but name.
After 10 years the monitoring would be phased out and in 15 years there would be no monitoring. Iran would be presumed a normal country. And they’d be a few weeks away from getting dozens of bombs.
That was the best deal we could get, in exchange for Iran’s “cooperation” we’d pay Billions of dollars for it and get rid of the sanctions.
IMHO the flaws in this approach are pretty obvious.
…to avoid being attacked for developing nukes, you should develop nukes as fast and as secretly as possible.
Yes. However that’s better than the alternative, where you develop them openly and just claim it’s “for civilian purposes” even when it’s obvious they’re not.
Like Israel?
I think if Israel were big on supporting terrorism and so on then the world would feel very different about it’s nuclear program.
I mean, Israel is a pretty big supporter of terrorism. It gets away with it because everyone knows it has nukes. And because it has the U.S. as its bullying big brother.
And none of it’s neighbors feel the need to get nukes to counter Israel’s while those same neighbors have said they’ll need to if Iran does.
Almost like all of them understand that Israel responds to terrorism and Hamas using human shields is on Hamas’ ticket and not Israel’s.
None of them feel the need? You don’t think Iraq, the Saudis, Yemen, Lebanon, etc., would love nukes if they had the ability to produce them and not either run afoul of their close allies (in the Saudis case) or get bombed into oblivion by Israel and their big brother before they can ever have a functioning nuke? I mean, Israel invades Lebanon every few years. Imagine if they, you know, couldn’t.
What Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel have shown is that the best way to prevent hostile neighbors from attacking your country on even a medium scale, you have to have nukes. Iran is learning this lesson doubly, with both the U.S. and Israel attacking them. If they weren’t pursuing nukes — and there’s evidence they weren’t, at least not urgently — they definitely will be going forward.
I mean, Israel invades Lebanon every few years. Imagine if they, you know, couldn’t.
Does this imaginary reality picture Israel tolerating terrorism against it’s civilians, does it picture all the Jews fleeing the Middle East, or does it picture the terrorism stopping?
What is your desired vision for peace in the Middle East? More specifically, does that vision include a Jewish state existing?
…doesn’t that make the point? Like, explicitly?
“Yes. Like Israel.”
What’s the next part of the argument? “Isn’t it hypocritical to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of people who scream for your death?”
“Um. No?”
Wait, maybe a bad appeal to unshared principles will do the job. “I thought you were in support of gun control. This is exactly that.”
My point was if you don’t want nukes in the region, then letting Israel have them was a bad idea. Given that Israel has them, that genie is no longer really bottle-able.
Israel has had nukes for 58 years (since 1967). If anyone were going to get nukes because of Israel they already would have.
So since Israel has them, we pretty much have to let Iran have them?
I’m not sure I agree with that but I am open to hearing the argument.
Dark’s argument is Iran having them would result in multiple states in the region having them. My counter is Israel having them is why Iran is trying to have them. Whether or not any of them should have them is a different discussion.
Iran having them would result in multiple states in the region having them
Hasn’t yet.
Israel having them is why Iran is trying to have them
I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of reasons to want them.
Whether or not any of them should have them is a different discussion.
That particular discussion recently was reopened and concluded, however temporarily, with a dozen bunker-busters.
Israel having them is why Iran is trying to have them
Wiki doesn’t list that one, nor has Iran ever claimed it as far as I know. They did say they’ll find other ways to destroy Israel and then stopped cooperating with the UN inspectors so there’s that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#Motivations
Thanks to Heather Cox-Richardson, we learned tonight that the US planted the seeds for this at the same time we planted them in Israel:
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-23-2025?r=v677&utm_medium=ios
The seeds? Iran in 1974 was a normal state and had signed the non-proliferation treaty.
We were obligated under that treaty to help them with their civilian nuclear power program in exchange for them not seeking nukes. For that matter we’ve offered to give modern Iran as much civilian enhanced U as they want.
Back in the 60’s nuclear power was supposed to be cheap and limitless.
They were a government imposed on Iran’s people by a CIA funded coup. As were a great many regimes back then. To expect they would remain so was the worst kind of hubris.
Beyond that – we gave them the equipment to start a nuclear program. That the current regime converted it to military purposes should have surprised exactly no one. But to keep yammering on about how bad this – while ignoring our own very important role in putting the pieces in play is to be intellectually dishonest at best.
Unfortunately I lack a time travel machine to go back to my grand parents time and warn the US that they shouldn’t honor their treaty obligations to a country they were in good standing at the time.
Even if I had and we hadn’t “given them the seeds”, Iran would have gotten the technology from someone else because at the time everything they did was legal and acceptable. It wasn’t obvious that this was a weapons program until well after the revolution.
They were a government imposed on Iran’s people by a CIA funded coup
True. And now they have a government imposed on them by a religious sect. First actual free election and the Priests are out of there. Certainly Iran’s women don’t like being beaten up because of different views on women’s fashion.
One of the ironies of this is at the time of the Iranian revolution President Jimmy Carter was well aware of the ethical issues you describe and hoped to resolve them by having the revolutionaries take over and being on better terms with them.
However, we still have the problem of what to do with an insane country run by religious zealots who constantly attack their regional neighbors via terror proxies and who want nuclear weapons.
I’m not sure this has much predictive value.
1. We have another (worse) precedent where Libya negotiated the end of it’s nuclear and WMD program and complied with international inspections, only to be bombed by the US and it’s EU negotiating partners.
2. North Korea turned it’s Soviet civilian program into a semi-secret program successfully having negotiated multiple treaties promising not to complete it’s program.
3. India pursued civilian nuclear and pivoted to a secret weapons program with internal expertise.
4. Pakistan, same as above. Neither country participated in NPT.
5. Famously, Israel has no nuclear weapons; just a Civilian Nuclear program.
Nuclear non-proliferation is difficult… it seems to fail on every axis except the voluntary one. And even then, it fails since voluntary compliance simply pivots to non-compliance in secret.
Donald Trump just tweeted out (on Truth Social):
Even *I* sympathize with the folks who say “I’d kinda like the emphasis to be on MAGA instead of MIGA.”
The consensus seems to be that the entire inventory of bunker busters was 19 or 20. They cost many of millions of dollars to build, and it is not clear that the production infrastructure still exists, so months or longer. If 14 were not enough, it’s unlikely that another 5 or 6 are. The scary thought is that there are hundreds of low-yield nukes available, easier to deliver, and already deployed as close as the nearest carrier strike group.
When you say “low-yield nuke”, my first thought is “ground-level dirty bomb”.
How accurate is that?
How accurate is that?
Not at all. They’re designed to be used on a battlefield where we have troops. So they’d blow up soldiers, not cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon
I’m not particularly worried about the ones that would be launched.
I’m particularly worried about the ones that would be smuggled.
We live in strange times when Iran’s next move would be to do the Norm MacDonald meme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMyKGNy3CI4
It would be MAD without the MA. Iran’s regime has been exposed militarily; but it has outs.
Nevertheless, can never rule out the unpredictable machinations of radical anarchist gunmen and train schedules.
The problem with appealing to 2nd order effects is that you may be arguing against someone who will then appeal to 3rd order effects.
“What about 4th order effects?”
“Um… that’s sexist.”
Here’s a second order effect that would have been a third order effect on Friday: Qatar has closed its airspace.
I don’t know whether that means that Al-Udeid’s airspace is also closed.
The real question is whether the missiles to Qatar are part of the face-saving process that Iran uses to de-escalate? Post Soleimani, post Israel #1, post Fordow…?
They’ve *SAID* that they are?
And Trump has agreed that they are? Kinda?
Seems that way. So we can all be grateful that everyone is now standing down and the war that we started seems to be over with some stuff blown up but not much more than that. (Edited to add: Oh, other than all those people who died, but they were Iranian so they must have been bad.)
Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons before, they don’t have them now.
We didn’t know where their uranium was before, and we still don’t now.
No one will go through regime change.
Under Trump’s leadership we were seen as untrustworthy, belligerent, and just plain unlikeable, and that certainly hasn’t changed, either.
Nothing changed. The Straits of Hormuz were not shut. Hell, the market barely even blinked.
Well, I wouldn’t declare victory just yet if I were Team Trump; and, I wouldn’t rule out Trump going to the well one more time and spoiling the soup.
But most importantly, the harder work of diplomatic negotiations of a new framework are non-existent; and I don’t trust the Trump team to navigate this window of opportunity.
On the matter of trustworthiness, it is possible that US credibility on this and some related matters has gone up. I take your point that it may also go down in other areas; but pending final dispositions, nuclear non-Proliferation has a new risk calculus.
I recognize that I may have different long-standing priors regarding international institutionalism than you do; but be assured it comes from a much older, non-Trumpy place.
Finally, I’d assume betting markets on Trump catching a bullet within 24-months should have inched upwards some amount.
Let me go on the record as being clear that I am not rooting in favor of an assassin’s bullet. I want Trump removed from office, via lawful and peaceful means. (I know very well I am not going to get that.)
Didn’t mean to suggest you were. 🙂
The increase in odds are generic and unattributable.
…my first thought is “ground-level dirty bomb”…. How accurate is that?
Dirty in the sense that ground-burst or shallow-penetration warheads inherently create more fallout than an air-burst bomb of the same design, yes. Dirty in the sense of salted bomb designs intended to maximize the effective amount of radioactive fallout, no.
Well, a suitcase nuke (where suitcase is defined as “one of the big suitcases” rather than “briefcase”) is probably unlikely given the levels of tech required.
But it’s significantly easier to imagine one that could fit in the back of a 1982 Subaru GL.