Washington: Around 14 hours after unprecedented strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, US military authorities provided details of ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’.
Addressing a media briefing at the Pentagon on Sunday morning (Washington time), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said over 125 aircraft, including seven stealth B-2 bombers, were used and a deception operation carried out which saw bombers deployed over the Pacific as a “decoy”.
“Bombers dropped more than a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on two Iranian nuclear facilities, Fordow and Natanz, and Tomahawk missiles were launched at Isfahan,” informed Caine.
The bombers struck Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan beginning at 2.10 am (Iran time) and were out of Iranian airspace by 2.35 am.
In what was the longest B-2 mission in nearly three decades, the bombers flew 18 hours from a base in Missouri with multiple mid-air refuelling, Caine said.
The strikes on Iran included 14 bunker-buster bombs, more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles and over 125 military aircraft.
“The main strike package comprised of seven B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, proceeded quietly to the east with minimal communications throughout the 18-hour flight,” Caine said.
He went on to explain how the B-2 bombers proceeded to their targets.
“At midnight Friday into Saturday morning, a large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental US. As part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise, a part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy, a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington and in Tampa.”
Around 12.30 am (Iran time), Caine said a US submarine “launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets” at the Isfahan nuclear site in Iran.
The lead B-2 bomber launched two massive bunker-buster bombs at Fordow nuclear site at 2.10 am, after which the “remaining bombers then hit their targets.”
Additional targets were struck till 2.35 am.
Caine added that the US military then “began its return home”, noting that no shots were fired by Iran at the American forces on the way in or out.
The Tomahawk missile was the last to strike at Isfahan to ensure that the US kept the “element of surprise.”
He remarked “it appears Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems did not see us.”
‘Iran’s nukes obliterated’
American Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth claimed that Iran’s nuclear programme was “devastated” and “obliterated.”
Hegseth said Trump made it amply clear since he first became US president that Iran “must not get a nuclear weapon.”
Iran was given enough chance to strike a deal and stop its nuclear programme, but refused to do so.
“The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back. When this president speaks, the world should listen,” Hegseth said.
