The United States hit, on Saturday night (21), three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, central Iran, after days of speculation whether the Americans would enter Israel or not with Iran’s war.
The objective of the operation Midnight Hammer (Midnight hammer in English), according to the US Security Department, was “to devastate the Iranian nuclear program”, as a diplomatic agreement between Trump representatives and Ali Khamenei regime did not advance after several trading rounds.
According to US President Donald Trump, and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the attack of the seven B-2 bombers and the 14 GBU-57 antibunker bombs-each with 13 tons-caused “severe damage” and “obliterate” to Iran’s nuclear structure.
Tehran, in turn, states that the US offensive was “frustrated” by aerial defenses around uranium enrichment structures. According to sources from Iranian state TV, the structures remain intact, except for small external damage at the input and exit points of the three complexes.
Risk of nuclear contamination
In a statement on Sunday, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA), said that, so far, believes that there will be no consequences for health or environment in the US attacked region. “After attacks on three nuclear facilities in Iran, including Fordow, the IAEA can confirm that so far there has been no increase in radiation levels outside the facilities,” he wrote on X (former Twitter).
Last week reports, shared by the AIEA, realized that the three bombarded facilities housed nuclear material in the form of enriched uranium at different levels, and that there was a possibility of radioactive contamination within the facilities themselves.
Nuclear capacity of Iran
Asked this morning, during a news conference, if the attacks on midnight hammering caused irreversible damage to the nuclear structures of Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and US Chief of Staff Dan Caine said it was still uncertain to certainly the impact of the B-2.
“We are still analyzing all the damage caused, but this was a precise attack, of great success, that hit the desired targets to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and that no other country in the world would be able to accomplish,” said Hegseth. General Caine, answering a question, says it is too early to tell if Iran still maintains any nuclear capacity.
Midnight hammer does not reach khamenei
After the attack, US government officials sought to clarify that the sole purpose of the Persian country offensive is to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment complex, and that Americans do not intend to overthrow the Ayatollah regime Ali Khamenei in power since 1989.
“The United States is not at war with Iran. We are at war with the Iran’s nuclear program,” said US Vice President JD Vance in an interview on Sunday morning (22). “I won’t go into sensitive intelligence details about what we have seen on the ground in Iran, but we saw a lot, and I feel very confident that we substantially delay its development of a nuclear weapon, and that was the goal of this attack,” Vance told NBC television channel.
