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Operation Midnight Hammer: The Night We Pummeled Iran’s Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant

BY Guy D. McCardle

We did more than send a message—we carved it into the bedrock with a 30,000-pound pen named MOP and left Tehran to read it in the dark.

Two pilots, one bomber, and a payload that can collapse a mountain—this is what resolve looks like before it takes flight. US Air Force photo taken by Staff Sgt. Kristin Heller, 13 JUN 2024

A Decade in the Making

The strikes didn’t come out of the blue. They were the inevitable punctuation mark on a sentence written fifteen years ago in uranium hexafluoride and fortified concrete. For over a decade, the U.S. and its allies watched Iran build an intricate web of nuclear infrastructure beneath its soil—deep, hardened, and laced with enough secrecy to make Langley jealous. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—names that had floated in D.C. war rooms and Tel Aviv bunkers—were never just research sites. They were vaults for a future bomb. Targets. 

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For years, diplomacy limped along while Iran spun centrifuges beneath mountains. Sanctions bit, but (for political reasons I won’t get into here) never deep enough. Enrichment slowed, then resumed. Inspections were granted, then blocked. What began as a slow crawl toward capability had, by 2025, become a sprint—one that could no longer be ignored.

Precision Violence

Just after midnight on June 22nd, the United States unleashed Operation Midnight Hammer. It was a masterclass in precision violence.

Seven B‑2 Spirit stealth bombers, silent phantoms of Missouri’s Whiteman AFB, launched in sequence, cloaked by misdirection and electronic deception. They carried the most brutal tool for the job in the arsenal: the GBU‑57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator—a 30,000-pound monster designed to crack open mountains like pistachio shells. Only the B‑2 can haul it. And it did. Well. They can each carry 2 Massive Ordnance Penetrators…the MOP. 

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At least 14 of those bunker busters were dropped—12 at Fordow, 2 at Natanz—alongside 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from submerged platforms in the Persian Gulf, targeting surface defenses and secondary targets near Isfahan. The strike package was choreographed to within seconds, a symphony of silence followed by the screams of torn earth.

No American personnel were harmed. No US aircraft were touched. A clean strike—surgical in execution, brutal in consequence.

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What the Bombs Achieved

Early bomb damage assessments suggest catastrophic disruption to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Satellite imagery shows Fordow’s entrances collapsed, the surrounding rock blistered by precision strikes. What lies beneath that collapsed stone is anyone’s guess—but experts estimate the cascade halls were either destroyed or rendered inaccessible. At Natanz, key surface-level installations were obliterated, while deeper structures were severely damaged. Isfahan’s grid and surrounding support infrastructure were hit hard, though its deeper nodes may have survived the initial strike.

Notably, no radiation spikes were recorded—suggesting Iran removed fissile materials ahead of time. Whether that was preparation or pure luck remains unclear.

Last week, I wrote about WC-135R “Constant Phoenix” aircraft taking off from its home in Nebraska. At least one was deployed to the Middle East amid the recent escalation involving Iran and Israel. The Air Force even released photos of the aircraft, confirming they operated out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Diego Garcia. The deployment was precautionary, and the results of their atmospheric monitoring missions have not been publicly disclosed.

General Dan Caine, speaking from CENTCOM, called the operation a “devastating blow to Iran’s weapons capability.” He wasn’t wrong.

 

The Next Moves on the Board

Iran’s relative silence in the immediate aftermath isn’t peace—it’s calculation. Tehran is likely weighing asymmetric options against US interests: cyber attacks, proxy strikes, oil tanker sabotage, maybe even political assassinations in the region. Retaliation is expected, though not guaranteed to be immediate. The regime has mastered the art of slow burn payback.

The broader Middle East braces for secondary shockwaves. Israeli defenses are on high alert. Gulf States quietly applaud behind mirrored glass. European leaders—left in the dark—scramble for statements of concern. China and Russia condemn, as expected, and begin leveraging the chaos for diplomatic capital.

Back home, Washington walks a tightrope. The administration claims it acted to prevent nuclear escalation. Critics scream about war powers, congressional oversight, and unilateral action. For now, the American public, still gun-shy from two decades in the desert and mountains, remains watchful but eerily quiet.

Oil markets hiccup. Defense stocks rise. Cable news foams at the mouth.

 

The Bigger Picture

This wasn’t merely a strike—it was a message carved into the crust of the earth. The U.S. reminded the world it still owns the long reach, the biggest stick, and when necessary, will swing with closed fists. The implications go beyond Iran. North Korea’s looking over its shoulder. Russia notes the precision. China watches the public response.

But the gamble is real. If this decapitation strike fails to permanently cripple Iran’s nuclear ambitions, then what? Another round in six months? A full-scale regional war? Or does the regime fall back, bruised and buried, and start digging again?

The U.S. may have avoided casualties this time, but the cost could still come—slowly, quietly, and from angles we haven’t yet seen.

 

Final Thoughts

We buried bombs in the mountains and came home untouched. The earth still trembles from the hit, but the political fault lines are shifting faster than satellites can track.

This was a tactical win, no doubt. But whether it buys long-term peace or triggers a wider war remains to be seen.

Either way, the clock is ticking louder now.

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