As the truce between Israel and Iran brokered by the US Trump Administration on 24 June 2025 appeared to be holding on 25 June after some initial violations, attention turned to just how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear weapon programme by Operation ‘Midnight Hammer’: the US B-2 bomber and cruise missile strikes against Iranian nuclear sites that was ordered by US President Donald Trump and took place on 21 June.
In a Pentagon press briefing on 22 June US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated, “Our initial assessment … is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here. We believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there.”
At the same press briefing, however, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said that a bomb damage assessment (BDA) of the results from the raid was still pending and declined to offer an opinion on the damage caused.
President Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly claimed in the following days that the B-2 strikes, which dropped 14 30,000 lb (13,608 kg) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) munitions on the Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow and Natanz, “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
On 25 June, in fact, the White House issued a bizarre press release entitled, ‘Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News’. The press release included statements from President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, Gen Caine and a dozen other individuals and organisations – all testifying to the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapon programme.
Around the same time, however, CNN published an exclusive report citing seven people briefed on an early assessment made by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that concluded Iran’s nuclear weapon programme likely had not been destroyed by Operation ‘Midnight Hammer’.
“Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely ‘intact’. Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes,” the CNN report stated.
The Trump Administration acknowledged the report but rejected it, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling CNN in a statement, “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong.”
An Israeli assessment of the impact of the US strikes cited by CNN also found less damage at Fordow than expected, although Israeli officials said they believed the combination of US and Israeli military action on multiple nuclear sites had set back the Iranian nuclear programme by two years.
The truth of the matter is that, while the detonation of several 30,000 lb MOP munitions at both Fordow and Natanz potentially caused considerable damage to the underground infrastructure at those sites, satellite imagery-based BDAs alone simply cannot confirm this. A more comprehensive intelligence picture is only likely drawn through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) – using spies operating inside Iran – and communications intelligence (COMINT) – the interception of conversations and messages between Iranian officials discussing the damage. Both of these types of intelligence gathering could take weeks, if not months, to build up a credible intelligence picture.
Meanwhile, the implications of how that intelligence picture pans out are considerable: either Operation ‘Midnight Hammer’ has, indeed, put back Iran’s nuclear programme by years, or the Iranian regime will be able to put things back together with greater resolve than ever to race towards completing a nuclear weapon.
Any amount of spin asserted by the Trump Administration is not going to change the situation on the ground – or in this case under it – in Iran.
