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How U.S. Could Destroy Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Site

Photo by Dylan McLeod / Unsplash

Striking Fordow is central to crippling Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, but only the U.S. has both the bomb powerful enough to penetrate its most fortified site and the bomber that can deliver it.

President Donald Trump has approved plans to attack Iran but has not made a final decision on whether to carry out a strike, the BBC’s U.S. partner CBS reports.

Should the U.S. enter the conflict between Israel and Iran, it would likely play a key role in targeting Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities.

That task would almost certainly fall to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber – an aircraft capable of delivering the 13,000 kg GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the world’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb.

Trump is reportedly considering a strike on Fordow, Iran’s most deeply buried nuclear enrichment site.

The facility is entirely underground, carved into a mountainside. U.N. inspectors who visited the site described tunnels with thick walls and blastproof doors, with some bunkers protected by up to 110 meters of rock.

The GBU-57 bunker-buster bomb is designed to penetrate up to 60 meters of concrete or rock. Multiple bombs dropped on the same location can achieve even deeper penetration.

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