Pentagon reveals new details about strike on Iran’s Fordow: What to know
Top defense official says "no one" is on the ground at Fordow to assess the damage, as the Trump administration tries to dispel doubts about the effectiveness of the US bombing raid designed to knock out Iran’s main enrichment facility.
WASHINGTON — The US Air Force’s long-range bombing run on the crown jewel of Iran’s nuclear program was more than 15 years in the making, Washington’s top general told reporters on Thursday.
As far back as 2009, analysts with the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) mapped out Fordow’s fortified underground architecture and began work on a massive, ground-penetrating conventional bomb designed specifically to infiltrate the facility’s main ventilation shaft, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine revealed during a press briefing at the Pentagon.
Just days before the June 22 strikes, Iranian personnel poured concrete over the ventilation shaft's opening on the mountainside above Fordow in a last-ditch bid to protect the facility.
The first of a dozen 15-ton GBU-57 bombs dropped by USAF B-2 bombers on Sunday blew off the concrete cover, before the subsequent bombs were launched into the shafts with fuses set to detonate inside the facility nearly 100 meters beneath the mountainside.
