Should you have been anticipating summer time 2025 to be all about blockbuster releases and shock anime bombs, neglect it—the actual pleasure occurred within the skies above Iran, with the form of high-tech, high-stakes navy motion that may make even essentially the most gratuitous motion motion pictures look sedate. Operation Midnight Hammer, the American-Israeli joint assault on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, wasn’t merely a navy marketing campaign—it was a lesson in modern warfare, political brinksmanship, and, sure, just a little little bit of navy posturing.
All of it started after weeks of heightened rigidity between Israel and Iran, the place Israel had staged a pre-emptive strike towards Iranian nuclear websites. In accordance with Conflict on the Rocks, Israel’s Operation Rising Lion was a deliberate assault that readily escalated right into a multi-theater battle and dragged the U.S. into the struggle with Operation Midnight Hammer. The U.S. didn’t simply arrive—they introduced the heavy artillery, actually. Seven B-2 Spirit stealth plane, the delight of US airpower, deployed a complete of 14 GBU-57 Large Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) on Iran’s most closely fortified nuclear amenities: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
Let’s focus on expertise, as this was the primary operational deployment of the GBU-57 MOPs ever. The 30,000-pound bombs, as reported by DefenseScoop, have been meant to blast by way of a whole lot of toes of concrete and rock and, as such, are the last word bunker busters. Solely the B-2 is able to carrying them, and every bomber can carry two. The mission was 15 years within the making, with testing and, after all, an entire lot of late-night Pentagon PowerPoints. As Air Power Gen. Dan Caine so eloquently phrased it, the mission was carried out with “unbelievable and overwhelming success,” and all the bombs struck their meant targets, with the pilots flying residence to a hero’s welcome.
However was it ever actually a slam dunk? Satellite tv for pc imagery paints a extra real looking image. Excessive-resolution photographs obtained by Maxar Applied sciences and revealed by BBC Confirm revealed widespread harm at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, with three huge craters over underground halls of centrifuges and blackened buildings surrounding the uranium conversion plant. Two clusters of three huge craters have been seen above the buried enrichment halls at Fordow, whereas at Natanz, the central enrichment advanced, the aboveground amenities have been already toast because of earlier Israeli assaults. Isfahan’s uranium conversion plant was characterised by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “worn out,” although satellite tv for pc imagery nonetheless indicated the power remaining, although blackened and battered.
Iran, nevertheless, wasn’t precisely on its again. Iranian Overseas Minister Abbas Araghchi denounced the strikes within the “strongest phrases,” charging the U.S. had betrayed diplomacy and warning that “all choices” have been out there for placing again, as reported by The Washington Put up. And retaliate they did—missile barrages slammed into central Israel, and Iran even fired on the U.S. Al Udeid base in Qatar. The U.S. and Qatari Patriot crews executed what Gen. Caine described as “the most important single Patriot engagement in U.S. navy historical past,” knocking out incoming missiles in a sight that most likely resembled a Fourth of July fireworks show, however with rather more on the road.
However that’s the place issues get extraordinarily attention-grabbing: not each goal is equal, and never everybody may be bombed with out the danger of nuclear or chemical catastrophe. The Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research says the specter of radioactive fallout was a key think about figuring out which locations to bomb and which to spare. Bushehr, Iran’s sole working nuclear energy station, was strictly out of bounds—hitting it could have risked a meltdown and poisoning the Gulf space. Bombing Fordow and Natanz, although theatrical, have been designed to reduce giant contamination, with the Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA) verifying that any contamination was saved contained in the amenities themselves.
So what did this all do? Because the Carnegie Endowment factors out, the strikes delayed Iran’s nuclear program by wiping out key infrastructure and making hundreds of centrifuges ineffective. However right here’s the catch: Iran had supposedly relocated its most delicate gear earlier than the bombing, and the experience to rebuild stays intact. The strikes may need gained 18 to 24 months, however they erased none of Iran’s nuclear ambitions or capabilities. Certainly, the Iranian parliament reacted by halting cooperation with the IAEA, rendering future monitoring and verification a diplomatic nightmare.
The struggle additionally reshaped the script for contemporary battle. The Israel-Iran battle was, reviews Conflict on the Rocks, an indication of multi-domain warfare—mixing air energy, cyber assaults, digital warfare, and psychological operations in a vertiginous show of Twenty first-century firepower. Israel’s preliminary cyber assault disabled Iranian communications and radar, whereas Iran’s drone and missile swarms pushed Israel’s famend Iron Dome and David’s Sling defenses to the take a look at. America’s contribution was most necessary, not solely in its bunker-busting bombs however in its missile protection help and intelligence sharing.
If there may be one lesson in Operation Midnight Hammer, it’s that the way forward for struggle is all about alliances, precision, and data dominance. No person goes to struggle alone any longer, and whoever can combine stealth bombers, cyber assaults, and psychological operations is whoever will write the principles. However whereas the mud clears and the remainder of the world holds its breath ready to know whether or not Iran will rebuild or retaliate, one factor is definite: the principles have modified, and the subsequent transfer is anyone’s guess.