US President Donald Trump China Standard Time on the morning of the 22nd suddenly announced that US warplanes had successfully destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities and left the country safely. The United States personally got involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran, which further spread the war in the Middle East. In spite of Donald Trump’s threat to “Unconditional surrender” after the air strike, the Iranians have launched a fresh missile counter-attack. Foreign media generally believed that because of the fordo nuclear facility deep underground about 100 meters, want to confirm the level of damage this round of air strikes, but also need some time.
14 drill bombs dropped on Iraqi nuclear facilities
According to both American and Israeli media reports, the air strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities was carefully planned, including Donald Trump’s confusing statements. As early as last week, it was noted that the US military was mobilizing its forces in response to the situation in the Middle East, including evacuating US military personnel and their families from bases in the Middle East, and sending tankers and fighter jets from the mainland to reinforce them, three aircraft carrier strike groups have been drawn in succession. With such a conspicuous move, almost all analysts have concluded that the US is about to strike Iran.
Donald Trump’s decision is particularly important in this context. But on the issue of whether to use force against Iran, he sent a vague and even opposite signal to the outside world, objectively playing a smoke screen effect. The messages have helped to ease tensions, particularly in Iran, about the“Imminent use of force by the United States against Iran.”.
According to the“Israel Times” reported on the 22nd, Israeli sources said that the United States and Israel about a year ago on the 21st local time on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the air strike. “We have been very successful in carrying out the attack on three Iranian nuclear facilities, including Fordo, Natanz and the Isfahan, with a full load of bombs,” Donald Trump said in a real social post after the raid. All aircraft have now left Iranian airspace,” he said in a public speech, “This operation is a glorious military victory. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facility has been completely destroyed.”
According to CNN (CNN) , British Sky News Network News, 22 local time, senior American officials at the Pentagon on the US military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities held a press conference. Dan Cain, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US military operation against Iran on the 21st was codenamed“Operation Midnight Hammer”, which involved more than 125 aircraft and a“Deception operation”, the bombers were deployed over the Pacific as“Decoys”. In addition, Dan Kane said the unprecedented operation used seven B-2 stealth bombers, each with a crew of two. He also said bombers had dropped 14 giant earth-penetrating bombs on Iran’s Fordo and Natanz nuclear sites and fired Tomahawk missiles at Isfahan sites.
B-2 bombers
Kane said Operation Hammer began on Friday night, US time, when a formation of B-2 bombers took off from the US mainland and some of them flew west as decoys, the rest of the bombers“Flew quietly eastward for 18 hours and maintained minimal communication”.
Kane said that when the B-2 bombers entered Iranian airspace, the US “Employed a variety of deceptive tactics, allowing the 4th and 5th generation fighters to rush to the front of the bomber formation at high altitudes and high speeds, strafing enemy fighters and surface-to-air missile threats in front of the bomber formation”. As it approached the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities, the US military used fighter jets’ “High-speed suppression weapons” to ensure the “Safe passage” of B-2 bombers.
Kane said the attack was a unilateral us bombing campaign that took advantage of previous Israeli attacks on Iranian targets but did not use Israeli warplanes.
The“War Zone” channel of the US“Power” website previously reported that the online flight tracking data and the public audio display of air traffic control, two groups of B-2 bombers, using call signs Mytee 11 and Mytee 21, took off from the Whiteman Air Force Base early Sunday morning and headed west across the Pacific Ocean. Because they carried heavy payloads like the GBU-57, shortly after take-off, the bombers joined the tankers over the Pacific Ocean near California for aerial refueling and then flew to Guam. “The U. S. B-2 bomber is on the way to the Middle East,” became the focus of many media attention at that time.
But in terms of time, the B-2s would have had to cross the Pacific and then the Indian Ocean, and would have had to refuel several times, making it difficult to meet the timetable announced by Donald Trump. Therefore, the report believes that the B-2 trans-oceanic operation, which has been noticed by the outside world, is likely to be a deceptive feint by the US Air Force, while the B-2 bomber, which is actually carrying out the attack mission, may have headed east earlier, following a trans-atlantic route to Iran, and in conjunction with a fleet of refueling aircraft that had been deployed to Europe in the past few days, the long-range assault was carried out halfway around the world. Details of the operation released by the US military support this view.
The B-2 bombers flew over the Mediterranean, Israel, Jordan and Iraq before reaching Iran, the Associated Press reported.
The outcome of the air strike is uncertain
Despite Donald Trump’s professed “Total destruction of the fordo underground nuclear complex”, doubts remain about the effectiveness of the air strikes. Shortly after Donald Trump announced air strikes on its nuclear facilities, Tehran said it had evacuated three of its main nuclear facilities and removed nuclear material, and that the US attack should not have caused significant damage. As evidence, satellite photos released by Maxar, a US commercial satellite imagery company, showed“Unusual truck and vehicle activity” near the FORDO nuclear facility on the 19th and 20th, as many as 16 trucks were concentrated at the facility’s entrance on the 19th, and they began dispersing on the 20th. Bloomberg previously mentioned that, “Iran now has 400kg of highly enriched uranium that can be packed into 16 containers about one metre high, and even if Israel destroys Iran’s enrichment facilities, the location of the nuclear material will still need to be relocated.” The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that no increase in radiation levels had been reported in the vicinity. Iranian state television claimed that only the entrance to the FORDO underground nuclear facility was bombed.
According to Axios, a senior Israeli official said it was too early to say for sure what the outcome of the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be, but that“Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by several years”. According to reports, for air strikes underground facilities of the results of analysis, usually take days or even weeks to reach a relatively accurate conclusion. Unlike ground-penetrating bombs, which attack shallow underground facilities, they can be judged directly by ground explosions and collapses, for Iran’s fordo underground nuclear facility, which is buried hundreds of meters underground, has multiple entrances and exits that are difficult to tell whether they are real or fake, and is specially reinforced and highly classified, even images taken by space satellites or high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft provide relatively limited information about damage, and the GBU-57 is not considered a success if it hits its target accurately. In particular, the distance between the entrance and exit of the FORDO underground nuclear facility and the main underground building is relatively long, and the United States and Israel need to obtain the relevant design plans with sufficient precision, only then is it possible to launch an accurate attack on the main body of the facility.
At the same time, even if the GBU-57 explosion caused a large-scale collapse of the mountain, but whether the deeper underground nuclear facilities to have sufficient impact, is still unknown. The synthetic aperture radar is another tool commonly used to identify subterranean facilities, but it is limited in the depth at which it can “See” 100m underground. The use of seismic or infrasound monitoring is also often used to confirm cases of underground high-yield explosions, but the relevant assessment takes a long time and is only indirect evidence. Some experts believe that in order to confirm the destruction of such deep-buried fortified targets as Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility, it requires a combination of real-time hit data, remote sensing reconnaissance, long-term signal monitoring and possible human intelligence to form a relatively reliable assessment. The fact that Donald Trump vowed to “Completely destroy the FORDO underground nuclear facility” just hours after the air strikes ended is not credible.
In fact, even many western analysts are skeptical that the GBU-57 can effectively destroy the FORDO underground nuclear facility. Unlike the multi-stage serial and progressive explosions used by conventional ground-penetrating bombs, the GBU-57 strikes underground targets with enormous kinetic energy, according to Scientific American. Since a single GBU-57 would not penetrate deep enough to reach the FORDO underground nuclear facility, it would require a precise attack on the same aiming point to have a chance of penetrating deep enough. However, after each huge bomb explosion, the tunnel that was previously forced to be drilled will be re-buried by the collapsed mountain body, even causing the rock structure of the mountain body to change. Even if the subsequent bombs fall from the same aiming point, it is also uncertain whether it will be possible to drill further down the path opened by the previous bomb, so more repeated air strikes may be needed to achieve more tangible results. In addition, there is a time lag before the different bombs are dropped, meaning that air strikes can last longer and pose greater risks.
Iran retaliated
According to the New York Times, Donald Trump acted because American intelligence agencies believed there had been no significant progress in nuclear program of Iran, “Only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by about six months,” and further Israeli attacks“Are unlikely to achieve greater results.”. The report also mentioned that a U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said that after“Destroying three Iranian nuclear facilities,” the U.S. military was not expected to carry out any further attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it will be prepared for a retaliatory Iranian attack.
In a public speech, Donald Trump warned the Iranians that the US could hit more targets if a peace deal was not reached. “Iran must now achieve peace. If they don’t, future attacks will be bigger and more difficult,” Berghenam bin Taleblu, an expert on Iran at the defense of Democracy Foundation, was quoted as saying by the singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao newspaper on the 22nd, donald Trump may want to offer the Iranian leadership a chance to “Step down”, hinting that a cooling of the situation is still possible. But it is widely believed that the war in the middle east can not be “Snuffed out”, as Donald Trump expects, but could spread further after the Americans themselves have gone down. Donald Trump is no longer entirely in control of where things will go from here, according to the BBC.
Just after the United States launched an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran immediately launched a new round of missile attacks against Israel on the morning of the 22nd. According to Israeli media statistics, Iran in this round of attacks at least used about 27 missiles, of which at least 10 breakthrough intercept hit the ground. Iran has used the Khyber missile for the first time in a missile attack, Iran’s Mahal news agency reported. The Khyber is likely to be a reference to the previously announced Iranian Khorramshahr ballistic missile. According to Iranian media reports, the Khorramshahr 4 missile is considered to be “Iran’s most destructive missile.”. It uses a liquid-fuel engine with a maximum speed of Mach 16 and a payload of 1.5 tons, far more than the 300-700 kg warheads of other Iranian missiles, and has the ability to carry multiple warheads, can hit multiple targets at the same time, intercept more difficult.
There are also doubts about the viability of American and Israeli air strikes to wipe out the nuclear program of Iran. Several US nuclear experts said Iran had mastered the full technology and production process to produce high-concentration nuclear material, and that even if it was damaged in the air strikes, it was only a matter of time before it could resume its capabilities in the future.
Donald Trump’s approval of an air strike on an Iranian nuclear facility is a gamble that Tehran’s threat of retaliation could spark a broader regional conflict, the defense news said Tuesday. The report said Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had warned the US that air strikes against the country would “Cause irreparable damage”. “Any US intervention will lead to an all-out war in the region,” declared Ismail Bahai, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry. The report stressed that a wider war was imminent. Yemeni Houthis issued a statement on the 22nd condemning the US military action against Iran, saying it is not in accordance with international law and Charter of the United Nations, is a blatant barbaric aggression. The Houthis said they would resume attacks on U. S. ships in the Red Sea because of what the U. S. had done.
The report mentioned that the exchange of fire between the United States and the Houthi armed forces had lasted for more than a year. Although the United States military had launched air strikes against the Houthi armed forces many times, however, the Houthi armed forces still launched missile and drone attacks against U.S. and Israeli merchant ships as well as U.S. naval vessels providing escorts. It was not until May this year that the Houthi armed forces reached an agreement with the United States, such attacks were suspended.
“Power” website“Theater” channel said that before and after the US announced an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the US military in the Middle East began a new round of evacuation, shows that the U. S. military is exceptionally worried about Iran to launch a large-scale attack on these closer U. S. military bases. “Iran’s short-range ballistic and cruise missiles and suicide attack drones are numerous and difficult to intercept and pose a significant threat to us bases in the region.”