Damage Assessment: Is Fordow ‘Gone’?
The IAEA has confirmed “clear and significant” damage to the surface and tunnel entrances of Iran’s Fordow facility.

After U.S. B-2 bombers dropped six 30,000-pound GBU‑57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Iran’s Fordow nuclear site on Saturday night, President Donald Trump reposted an assessment from Open Source Intel that said “Fordow is gone” on Truth Social.
During his 10 p.m. ET address to the nation, Trump said, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
Since Israel launched its preemptive strikes on June 13, we’ve all become armchair experts on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Fordow facility, buried deep beneath a mountain and considered the crown jewel of the theocratic regime’s nuclear weapons program, was regarded as the most heavily protected and the hardest to take out.
The U.S. operation, called “Midnight Hammer,” also struck Natanz, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, with both GBU-57s and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a U.S. Navy submarine.
The Isfahan uranium conversion center was hit with Tomahawks as well.
🚨BREAKING: President Trump shares a post saying Irans nuclear facility, Fordow, is gone. pic.twitter.com/3sJiVqlUQS
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 22, 2025
The Iranian government, for whom national pride outweighs all other considerations, insists that the U.S. attacks caused only ‘limited damage’ to Fordow. However, they provided no specifics.
Both portrayals may have been premature; the true extent of the damage likely lies somewhere in between.
A technical observer's comments on the attacks support Iran's claim of limited damage:
🔹 If Fordow had been destroyed, we would have seen volcanic craters, electromagnetic disruptions, emergency flights, seismographs lighting up, and infrared flames under the mountain. Instead,… pic.twitter.com/85RQbkNPf6
— Iran Military News (@IRAN_IRGC0) June 22, 2025
A close-up satellite view from June 22 show holes and craters on a ridge at Iran’s Fordow underground nuclear complex near Qom after US strikes, alongside an image captured before the attack for comparison. pic.twitter.com/x7PNTQzzA3
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) June 22, 2025
First, according to preliminary reports from both the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, no radioactive release has been detected, which is good news.
[The IAEA is an independent international organization that works in close partnership with the United Nations but is not a formal part of the UN system.]
The IAEA has confirmed “clear and significant” damage to the surface and tunnel entrances of Iran’s Fordow facility. However, the agency remains uncertain about the strikes’ effect on the deep internal cascade halls, which it says “may remain at least partially intact.” With inspections still pending, the extent of any damage to the site’s underground chambers remains unknown.
At a Sunday morning press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been completely obliterated.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine said, “Final battle damage will take some time but an initial battle damage assessment indicates that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
Reporters asked both Hegseth and Caine if Iran retains any nuclear capability. Both declined to answer, noting that until a battle damage assessment has been conducted, the extent of the damage to the facilities is impossible to know.
The BBC reported that “the deputy political director of Iran’s state broadcaster, Hassan Abedini, said Iran had evacuated these three nuclear sites a ‘while ago.’ Appearing on state-run TV, he said Iran ‘didn’t suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out.'”
Was it bluster or was it true?
Updates to follow.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn or X.

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Comments
Thanks for the f/u
Remember those 3 Chinese plans… hmm
And also remember it was Hillary that as SOS approved the selling of uranium to Iran…
To Russia
Russia > Iran…
The point would be that Clinton didn’t do that. Her crime is bad enough without trying to exaggerate it.
Planes
Hard to believe that after hitting them with 6 bunker busters that significant damage had not been done. I imagine that even if something survived down there getting to it is going to require a lot of work with heavy digging equipment.
At the very least Iran’s nuclear capability has been set back years and billions upon billions of dollars. And that presumes that Israel and the USA let Iran rebuild without taking further actions against Iran.
We’ll have another woke c*nt in The White House soon enough. And like 0bama, they’ll appease and provide succor to our enemies, being the traitorous c*nts that they are.
Remember, most likely USA “built” those sites. Obama:$1,700,000,000+ and Biden’s $16,000,000,000 return of formerly frozen funds.
We need talent, experience and brains of the current administration level for at least 15 more years to keep our world safe.
An incredible accomplishment for the Air Force and validation for Pete Hegseth who was demeaned and insulted as unfit to lead the DOD last week. You’re doubtless heard that there were zero leaks about this operation. I submit that not telling any democrats ahead of time contributed mightily to this.
Let’s hope that the missions were as successful in crippling Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
At least for a little while.
Note well that Trump tweeted about knowing where the Ayatollahs are hiding. Could this be the next phase?
To that end, I am 100% in favor of undoing Carter’s Folly.
A good part to the success has been Israel’s take down of the air defenses. As for the B-2s…knock, knock,knock,knock ,knock,knock…no one at home…..anymore.
And I submit that by not telling any democrats ahead of time guaranteed that the operation/operational plans would not mysteriously leak to the legacy media.
So, you’re taking reports from Iran Military News (@IRAN_IRGC0) seriously? That’s worse than accepting the civilian death statistics release by the Hamas Ministry of Health.
CNBC.com has some recent Maxar satellite photos of Fordo, one showing multiple cargo trucks lined up at the tunnel entrance before the delivery of bunker busting bombs.
We can suppose that they were not there as a result of an announcement of free ice cream.
“I have rules I live by. The first is that I believe nothing my government tells me.” …G. Carlin
My government is telling me Fordow is obliterated. The Iranian government says the paint needs to be touched up.
We might, just might, know the truth someday. Probably from neither government.
Israel’s role should be to send a special ops team to Fordow to conduct battle damage assessment and to destroy any areas that were missed.
Power was probably cut in the vicinity. The facility was likely evacuated, so chaos in the area should make follow-up with special operators feasible.
Apparently Mossad has plenty of agents on site to do after-action reporting – but rather than just risk just those assets I would expect them to deploy spy drones with Geiger counters to check both the bomb sites and anywhere they suspect Iran used as dispersal sites.
At a guess, I would say the timing of this attack was partially dictated by intel (almost certainly supplied by the Israelis) indicating that the three sites were in the process of being evacuated, including moving large amounts of equipment.
That means that the sites might very well have been made useless without completely removing Iran’s enrichment capability. As they work to reform it, they will learn the lesson of dispersal.
In other words, while they’ve been given a set back, the fight to keep the ayatollahs from getting nukes is not over.
I was wondering about the Israelites intel
It seems they have plants everywhere
We should have known they moved the Uranium, when they actually moved it
And where
We know where it went. We have satellites that can follow and recon on the ground once it gets there.
I’ve told you in another article that the goal was not to make a huge radioactive mess. If you think that is the goal then it’s good you aren’t in charge.
Denial of access from contamination would be a bonus.
I suggest caution on assuming full success here. A bomb does not distinguish between enrichment equipment and enriched uranium. The failure, so far, to detect any radiation, as in enriched uranium blown up, makes me wonder.
Uranium, natural or enriched, is radioactive, but not highly so. But a big jump in background radiation would indicate it was scattered about. Now, how do you store uranium? Well, not in powdered form. Most of it’s going to be in solid form of some sort. And stored in hefty containers, The centrifuges are going to be filled with uranium hexafluoride- a gas far heavier then air. Now, you have these huge bunker buster bombs creating an entrance hole as they burrow deep into the ground, exploding, creating lots of damage, which will cause pipe breaks and joint failures in the uranium hexafluoride piping systems, and- the entry hole will be sealed up by infall from the blast. Just how much leakage to the surface do you think there will be? The answer is- virtually none.
Any Iranians trying to do any salvage operations at Fordow better hope that no uranium hexafluoride (UF6) escaped from the system as it’s some nasty stuff. Getting exposed to it and its decomposition products (Hydrofluoric Acid and uranyl fluoride) will kill you dead or make you wish you were dead. Either way I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on anyone. Even my worst enemy.
Safety Data Sheet Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6) (PDF)
If it were the Chinese, they would just use the Uyghur’s or Falun Gong prisoners to clean it up – maybe these Muslims will just chalk it up to martyrdom?
For the Iranian government the obliteration of Jews outweighs all other considerations.
If the damage is not complete, then to quote from a favorite song:
“You go back, Jack, do it again
Wheel turnin’ ’round and ’round
You go back, Jack, do it again”
To paraphrase the Kinks:
“Then it’s back where you started
Here we go around again
Day after day, I get up and I say
Come on do it again (do it again, do it again, do it again)”
Hit the facility again if need be — either now, or, in the future.
Something I asked about weeks ago just got answered by a Russian. I was wondering why Iran just didn’t buy their nukes instead of building them? Now Russia says there are several countries willing to sell them nukes. Why Iran didn’t do this with the money Obama gave them Is a mystery. As for the new threat to close the Straits of Hormus, we should tell Iran if they do that they will lose ALL of their oil wells and equipment and ALL of their sea ports. That would mean no income and no food for them.
The only countries who might be willing to sell a nuke are Pakistan and North Korea. Any country that sells a nuke should be completely obliterated.
China? Russia? Now you’e talking WWIII
Yes. No country can be allowed to sell a nuke or give one way.
I was reviewing some stuff in view of yesterdays fireworks display in Iran. The mullahs, in the last five years, have spent 387 billion for their nuclear program in the last five years. That is almost their annual GDP. From the below articles:
Iran GDP for 2022 was 394.36 billion US dollars, a 2.85% increase from 2021.
Iran GDP for 2021 was 383.44 billion US dollars, a 46.25% increase from 2020.
Iran GDP for 2020 was 262.19 billion US dollars, a 21.39% decline from 2019.
So, beginning in 2021, Iran had a ton of cash to work on a nuclear weapon. I have a case of the Biden’s (or need some more coffee) but I would swear something changed in January…late that month…of 2021. And poof, Tehran is awash in cash to put into a nuclear program. Someone out there has got to be able to fill in the gaps in my memory, what changed in January 2021?
Anyone? Anyone?
https://greekreporter.com/2025/06/16/countries-nuclear-weapons/
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/irn/iran/gdp-gross-domestic-product#:~:text=Iran%20GDP%20for%202022%20was,a%2021.39%25%20decline%20from%202019.
10 year set-back? Still need regime change?
The centrifuges require absolute isolation from and ground vibrations. The shock would most likely affect their balance. Which means they are useless. Destroying the ventilation system assures that the underground area is useless until rebuilt. Even if they were moving / attempting to move any processed uranium, drones and satellites would have tracked where the vehicles went? Does anyone think that Israel and the US wouldn’t have considered that in the run up to this operation? I didn’t think that either. This isn’t over by a long stretch.
difficult to imagine building that sort of facility, spending that much time and
$$$ and not including some sort of system or canary into the design so as to remotely monitor (either kinetically or with video) every square inch of the complex–would think there is video/other monitoring info of the effects from the bombing–if there is and it can be had would be willing to bet that mossad has it–conspicuous silence from the israelis