What the satellite images on the United States attack on Iranian nuclear sites reveal

When united The States bombed Iran in the early hours of the local hour of Sunday, targeted three central structures for the country’s nuclear ambitions: the enrichment system of Uranium Fordow, Natanz’s nuclear structure and Isfahan’s nuclear technological center. The satellite images just released show the impact of the attack, at least what can be seen on the ground.

The weight of the bombing focused on Fordow, where the US forces dropped a dozen bomb-57 penetrators as part of his “Midnight Hammer” operation. These bombs of 30,000 pound-bunker-buster “are designed to penetrate up to 200 feet in the earth before exploding. The Fordow complex is about 260 feet underground.

This gap represents some uncertainty about how much damage supported by Fordww’s website. President Donald Trump shared a post on his social platform of his truth following the attack that declared “Fordww was disappeared” and later declared in a television discourse that “the Iranian nuclear enrichment structures were completely and totally canceled”. Its military, however, were slightly more impregnated for the result in a briefing on Sunday morning. “It would be too early for me to comment on what could still be there,” said General Dan Caine, president of the correspondence heads of Staff.

The satellite images can intrinsically tell you so much on a structure that is so much under the surface of the earth. But before and after the images are the best information publicly available on the impact of the bombing.

“What we see are six craters, two clusters of three, where there were 12 huge penetrators of ordinance,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the non -proliferation program of Eastern Asia at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. “The idea is that you have hit the same point over and over again to dig.”

The specific positions of these craters also count, says Joseph Rodgers, deputy director and colleague at the Center of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on nuclear issues. While the entrance tunnels to the Fordow complex seem to have not been targeted, the US bombs have fallen on what are probably ventilation trees, based on early construction satellite images on the site.

“The reason you would like to hit a ventilation tree is that it is a more direct path towards the main components of the underground structure,” says Rodgers.

That direct route is particularly important, given the construction of deep underground. The American army is based on “basically a model of computer” of the structure, says Lewis, who tells them “how much pressure could take before it seriously damages everything inside and perhaps also collapse the structure”. By bombing specific targeted areas with more ammunition, the United States did not need bombs capable of penetrating the entire 260 feet to cause substantial damage.

“They are probably not trying to enter the structure. They are probably just trying to approach and crush it with a shock wave,” says Lewis. “If you send a fairly large shock wave through that structure, he will kill people, break things, will damage the integrity.”