Donald Trump announced on Saturday that US planes bombed Iran’s three most important nuclear sites, including an underground facility at Fordow that he said was “completely and totally obliterated”.
The assault on the mountain complex at Fordow almost certainly involved B2 stealth bombers, the only aircraft big enough to deliver a 30,000lb precision-guided bomb, known as the GBU-57 E/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP — the world’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
The 6m-long MOP can reportedly penetrate with sheer kinetic force more than 60 metres of rock and soil — depending on the earth’s hardness — before exploding. Because it is precision-guided, multiple bombs can in theory be dropped on a single spot.