US President Donald Trump has asked his military advisers if using 30,000-pound bombs to destroy Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site can yield results, according to Axios.
Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP), which Trump is inquiring about, are powerful bunker-buster bombs held exclusively by the United States. The US possesses both the bombs and the stealth bombers necessary to deploy them; Israel, however, does not possess these weapons and lacks this capability altogether.
The Fordow nuclear facility is located approximately 300 feet underground inside a mountain and reinforced with multiple layers of concrete. Experts believe that the strategic location of the nuclear site makes it impervious to standard aerial strikes. Experts believe it can only be penetrated by the GBU-57 MOP, a weapon that is uniquely owned by the US. This bomb can be delivered only by aircraft such as the B2 Spirit stealth bomber, which no other country possesses.
Due to these limitations, Israel is seeking greater US involvement in offensive operations against Iran. Axios has reported that Pentagon officials have suggested to Trump that they believe the US bombs could effectively target and destroy the Fordow nuclear site. However, it is unclear if the president is fully convinced by the assessment of Pentagon officials.
Speaking to CNBC, David Des Roches, a professor and senior military fellow at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, explained the complexity of using these bombs against Iran.
“So you have two challenges. You would have to drop two of these penetrators at the exact same site,” he explained to CNBC, adding that multiple bombing runs would likely be necessary.
“You would never be precisely sure how much of the facility you’ve damaged,” he added.
Given these uncertainties, Des Roches suggested that Israel might need to assert air control and then deploy ground forces to the site.
“This leads me to believe that for those facilities, Israel will ultimately gain control of the air and then land forces on the ground, force their way into the facility by detonating the doors, and then go and place explosive charges, exfiltrate whatever intelligence they can get, and just detonate it from the inside,” he told CNBC.
Military experts have been cautioning that any strike on the Fordow nuclear site would not be simple, and moreover, it cannot be a one-time operation. They explain that the complex structure and fortification of the site make such a US mission challenging.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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