What You Need to Know About the 30,000-lb. Bomb That Could Crush Iran's Nuclear Weapons Dreams

Note: the above photo is an example of a bunker-busting bomb being tested; it is not the actual model discussed in this story.

We’ve reported on the one site that Israel (or the U.S.) needs to take out to truly crush Iran’s dreams of acquiring a nuclear weapon. It's called Fordo (sometimes spelled Fordow), and it's buried deep in a mountain and reportedly contains multiple centrifuges and a growing stockpile of uranium.

But how exactly would one destroy such a target, short of sending in an assault team on a high-risk, low odds mission? Many experts agree that the United States has the only weapon that could do it: the massive GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb. It weighs in at a cool 15 tons and is designed to penetrate down into the rock before letting loose its real destruction:

“Bunker buster” is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding. In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 30,000 pound (13,600 kilogram) precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the U.S. Air Force.

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Related: The One Crucial Site Israel Still Needs to Take Out to Stop Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

Trump Sends Warning to Iran Supreme Leader: Knows Exact Location, Demands ‘Unconditional Surrender’

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Fordo isn’t the only nuclear site Israel would like to see disappear; there’s also Isfahan and Natanz. However those two facilities don’t create quite the same issues as Fordo:

[Fordow] is by far the toughest target – an enrichment facility dug into a mountain, beneath hundreds of feet of rock and earth, where centrifuges are already producing uranium at 60 per cent purity, barely a hair’s breadth from weapons grade.

Conventional wisdom holds that only the heaviest bunker-busting bombs of the US Air Force could destroy Fordow, while Israel’s weapons would only cause superficial damage.

Delivered by a B-2 stealth bomber, it's touted as the ONLY bomb capable of punching through hundreds of feet of concrete and rock to take out hardened Iranian nuclear sites. Only a MOP can mop Fordo off the map.

Here is a different bunker-buster undergoing testing; you can see it’s a powerful weapon:

Trump has taken on a more threatening tone toward Iran in recent days as the Islamic Republic continues its nightly missile attacks on Israel, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that we are increasing our military assets in the region due to the conflict. However, it’s unknown whether the president would risk getting the U.S. dragged into a protracted war by dropping such a gargantuan bomb.

The other side of that coin, however, is that the world would certainly be a far happier place if Fordo were blasted to smithereens. 

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