A Scientific, OSINT Analysis of Strikes on Iran's Deeply Buried Nuclear Facilities

This Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) report critically evaluates the success of "Operation Midnight Hammer," the US military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025. While strikes on surface targets using Tomahawk missiles at Isfahan likely achieved their intended effects, this analysis concludes that the mission's primary objective - the "total obliteration" of Iran's deeply buried enrichment facilities at Fordo and Natanz, using GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) - appears to have been a significant failure in achieving its stated deep penetration and destructive goals. This conclusion is founded on a convergence of technical accounts provided by General Dan Caine, as well as first-hand evidence from the pilots which General Caine provided. The most integral comments from this press conference related to the pilots’ account of what happened, which was probably ignored by many in the press due to the administration’s use of the troops as political cover for their perceived inadequacies. This report is intended for the public, the press, and the government, to reassess the way that our nation thinks of intelligence. It is meant to keep us safe, by giving us as good of a reading of reality as possible, free of deference to a political party or figure.

Background of "Operation Midnight Hammer":

On June 22, 2025 (early morning local time in Iran), the United States launched precision strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. Seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers (made by American contractor Northrop Grumman) reportedly delivered (14) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bombs. These were used because Fordo and Natanz enrichment sites are said to be buried hundreds of feet below the Earth’s surface. Simultaneously, Tomahawk cruise missiles from a US submarine targeted surface infrastructure at the Isfahan nuclear complex. One of the key elements of analyzing the success of this operation, as well as any other operation, is to identify that there are multiple components meant to deliver a single outcome. In military operations, as with many other managerial tasks, identifying the proper outcome to align with general goals is important. It is important to ensure you create a plan that can work, but also so that afterwards, analysis is simple. Otherwise a sense of ambiguity is created. Retroactively, if (in this case) the explanation of and analysis of success is creating confusion, you must reassess whether or not the objectives were clear. I have written extensively on the political layers of this operation, and how it pertains to Donald Trump’s personal financial welfare. This conflict of interest explains why it is impossible to determine in public, by the press, and those in Congress, about whether or not this was successful. That aside, since actual bombs were dropped and the world was told as it was happening, we need to assess whether the cover excuse (fulfilling on the claim that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”) and objectives were fulfilled. Following the strikes, US officials, including President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, swiftly declared the mission an "extreme success" and claimed "total obliteration" of the targeted facilities. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered limited details of the operation, emphasizing the B-2's capabilities and presenting test footage of the MOP.

Analysis of Strike Efficacy:

1. Tomahawk Strikes on Surface Targets (Isfahan): High Probability of Success

• Weapon Suitability: Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) are highly precise cruise missiles with a well-established combat record against surface infrastructure. Their conventional unitary warheads are effective for destroying buildings, power stations, laboratories, and other above-ground targets.
• Target Vulnerability: Surface facilities, while operationally vital, are inherently vulnerable to conventional aerial bombardment. The very act of burying critical enrichment components deep underground signifies that the most sensitive elements of Iran's nuclear program reside beneath the surface, not in exposed buildings.
• Conclusion: It is highly probable that the Tomahawk strikes at Isfahan achieved significant destruction of their intended surface targets, causing substantial disruption to the facility's overall operations. This aspect of "Operation Midnight Hammer" appears to have been successful within its defined scope.

2. GBU-57 MOP Strikes on Deeply Buried Targets (Fordo & Natanz): Indicators of Failure to Achieve Deep Obliteration

The US administration's claims of "total obliteration" of Fordo and Natanz are critically undermined by a convergence of scientific indicators and eyewitness accounts:

1. The "Brightest Explosion" Phenomenon:

• Anecdotal Evidence: General Dan Caine publicly quoted a pilot from the mission who reported seeing "the brightest explosion I've ever seen, it literally looked like daylight.”
• Scientific Discrepancy: A successful, deeply contained underground detonation of a conventional bomb, designed to transfer its energy into crushing rock and forming a subterranean cavity, would primarily dissipate energy through seismic waves and ground deformation. It would not produce a massive, visible flash of light reaching the surface from hundreds of feet below ground, as the light would be absorbed by the overlying geological material. A bright explosion that was visible from flight altitude is indicative of an explosion occurring on or very near the surface, or one where a significant portion of its energy has vented directly to the atmosphere through an uncontained, compromised overburden.
• Implication: This direct eyewitness account from a mission participant strongly suggests that a substantial amount of the bombs' explosive energy escaped to the surface, or never reached the subterranean target, which contradicts the expected outcome of a deeply contained, destructive blast.

1. Absence of Expected Causal Seismic Activity:

• Iran's High Natural Seismicity: Iran is among the world's most seismically active regions, experiencing over 2,000 earthquakes annually, with more than 125 recorded in a single week in early June 2025 (Tehran Times, June 9, 2025). This high natural seismicity means that any significant seismic activity, whether natural or man-made, is highly likely to be detected by national and international monitoring networks. Global seismic monitoring systems (such as those of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), Esri, and Berkeley Seismology Lab) provide comprehensive coverage and openly share data (IRIS Seismic Monitor), (Esri Earthquakes), (Berkeley Seismology Lab).
• Public Speculation: Following recent regional tensions and prior Israeli strikes, some publications openly speculated about a potential link between natural seismic events in Iran and military actions, with some even raising theories of covert nuclear testing due to the timing of certain quakes (India Today, June 21, 2025), (NDTV, June 22, 2025), (Interesting Engineering, June 22, 2025). This highlights the general public and media awareness of seismic activity in the region and the immediate search for connections. These reports of an actual nuclear weapons test are unsubstantiated, and only evocative of so-called chatter that the government appears unaware of or unwilling to admit.
• Analysis of Specific Earthquake Data: This report specifically analyzed the only two prominent earthquake events located in Iran during the time of these strikes:
  • Magnitude 5.1 Earthquake (USGS Event ID: us7000q8hj): Occurred on June 24, 2025, at 17:49:14 UTC, two days after the US strikes (USGS Event Page).
  • Magnitude 2.5 Earthquake (USGS Event ID: us6000qlqm): Occurred on June 22, 2025, at 15:38:43 UTC, later on the same day as the US strikes (USGS Event Page).
  • Crucial Depth: Both events were consistently recorded at a focal depth of 10 kilometers. This depth is characteristic of natural tectonic earthquakes, where faulting occurs deep within the Earth's crust due to geological plate movements.
• Expected Seismic Signature of GBU-57 MOPs: If 14 GBU-57 MOPs had detonated effectively at their intended operational depth (approximately 60-90 meters or 200-300 feet), the combined explosive energy should have generated a significant seismic event, likely in the Magnitude 2.5 to 4.0+ range. Crucially, such events would exhibit a distinctly shallow focal depth (tens to a few hundreds of meters, not kilometers) and unique waveform patterns that allow seismologists to differentiate them from natural earthquakes.
• Refuting "Nuclear Testing" Speculation: The 10 km depth of the observed earthquakes makes it highly improbable that they were caused by nuclear testing. While underground nuclear tests generate seismic events, their apparent depth would generally be consistent with the actual detonation depth (which would be much shallower than 10 km for a test).
• The Discrepancy: The absence of publicly reported, shallow-depth seismic events with explosion-like characteristics directly at the Fordo or Natanz sites on June 22nd (or very early June 23rd), despite the region's high natural seismicity and robust monitoring capabilities, is a strong circumstantial indicator. It suggests that the bombs either did not achieve their intended deep, contained destructive effects or that their seismic energy was inefficiently coupled to the ground.
• Implication: The lack of corroborating seismic indicators, especially for shallow-depth explosions, suggests that the bombs failed to achieve the necessary deep, contained detonations as required to “totally obliterate” the site.

1. The Sequential Penetration Problem:

• The Implied Strategy: Defeating deeply buried targets like Fordo often relies on "sequential penetration," where multiple penetrators are aimed at the same entry point. The theory holds that initial bombs "pre-condition" the target material, allowing subsequent bombs to penetrate deeper. Little research is known about the effect of using 5 or 6 bombs in sequence for an underground target like this.
• The "Concrete Caps" and Backfill Problem: Official statements mentioned "concrete caps" being "forcibly removed" by the first bomb in sequence. From a physics standpoint, a 30,000-pound penetrator impacting a heavily reinforced concrete cap would not cleanly remove it. It would also not cleanly drill a hole in the cap. Instead, the concrete would be violently pulverized and fragmented immediately, creating a chaotic, dense debris field of concrete, rebar, and dislodged rock within and around the shaft entrance they were aiming for.
  • Subsequent bombs, rather than finding a clear path, would likely plow into this highly irregular and resistant rubble, inducing extreme drag forces, rapid deceleration, and increasing the probability of trajectory deviation (e.g., tumbling, breaking apart).
  • This intense, uneven resistance could trigger the bombs' sophisticated fuzing systems to register a hard stop or sufficient deceleration, leading to premature detonation within the upper, debris-choked portions of the shafts, well before reaching the intended deep targets. Each subsequent bomb has this risk, compounding the risk.
• Non-Straight Shafts: Experts in hardened facility design confirm that air shafts and access tunnels (like what these bunker busters were supposedly aiming at) to deeply buried facilities are rarely perfectly straight down like they appeared in some of the diagrams the military and White House presented. These shafts typically incorporate turns, zig-zags, and other features to attenuate blast waves. If the bombs were aimed at such non-linear shafts, their trajectory would be severely compromised upon encountering any bend or obstruction, further increasing the chance of premature detonation or structural failure within the uppermost sections.
• Implication: These physical realities strongly suggest that the sequential penetration strategy, particularly given the violent fragmentation of hardened caps and likely non-linear shaft designs, would have been highly inefficient at best, and at worst, resulted in repeated premature detonations at much shallower depths than the target's core.

Conclusion on Mission Effectiveness:

While the Tomahawk strikes against surface infrastructure at Isfahan were likely effective, the evidence strongly suggests a significant failure in "Operation Midnight Hammer" to achieve "total obliteration" of Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordo and Natanz through deep penetration. The eyewitness account of a "brightest explosion," coupled with the absence of expected shallow-depth seismic activity, and a scientific understanding of penetrator ballistics in complex, debris-filled underground structures, indicates that the GBU-57 MOPs likely detonated at much shallower depths than intended. This would result in significant damage to the upper layers of the facilities and their access points, but likely not the "total obliteration" of the most critical, deeply buried components. Imagine Donald Trump grabbed a literal hammer and started pounding the sand thinking it would dig up buried treasure underneath it. That’s a very crude way to think about the inefficiencies of using these bombs like a hammer to hit a target deep down.

Strategic Miscalculation: The Role of Command in "Operation Midnight Hammer"

This analysis points to a critical misjudgment at the highest levels of American military command, demonstrating a profound disconnect between the military's objectives and the scientific realities of the mission. In a hearing related to, among other things, the “Golden Dome” project, Senator Mark Kelly told Secretary Pete Hegseth that building interceptors like that is a "complex physics problem." Senator Kelly was concerned that Hegseth and our military did not possess the, shall we say, right stuff, for the job. I think that Operation Midnight Hammer’s overall strategic failure suggests, we do not. The Commander-in-Chief's rapid proclamations of "total obliteration," seemingly driven by a personal mindset rather than by robust, verifiable intelligence, set unrealistic expectations. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's reported conviction based on a single, unrepresentative test video further illustrates his lack of fitness for his very serious role in our federal government. A reliance on insufficient test evidence and an oversimplification of complex technical challenges resulted in danger for our pilots, an attack on our military members in Iraq and Qatar, additional set-backs in American Iranian relations, as well as terrorizing the world. This was not merely an operational oversight; it represents a strategic miscalculation born of apparent haste and a demonstrable lack of a comprehensive understanding of the physical and engineering principles governing such an attack. Our pilots executed their orders valiantly, delivering ordnance with precision to the designated coordinates, but they were sent into harm's way with a plan that, based on scientific analysis, offered no realistic possibility of achieving its most ambitious and vital objective. This significant discrepancy between rhetoric and likely reality, and the decision to commit high-value assets to a mission with such inherent scientific limitations, lies directly at the feet of the President and Secretary of Defense.

How Big of a Failure Was Operation Midnight Hammer?

If the goal was to “totally obliterate” (3) sites, it is clear that the surface level targets were probably irreparably damaged. They were not the most sensitive, though, and the mission could have actually been considered a success without those being hit. The likelihood is, that with respect to the underground facilities, this mission probably destroyed entrances and a layer of ventilation. So when Congress members say they think the program was set back “a matter of months,” a good follow up question would be, “what exactly do they need to do to get back up and running?”

1. There is no knowledge of other underground access points to these facilities that may be located far away or in hidden places, which means the Iranians could be accessing the site that was supposedly obliterated - already.
2. The likelihood is that this mission simply destroyed known entrances, the concrete protective cap, and a top layer of the ventilation system. The estimates of a few months - to get this cleaned up and fixed - makes sense.
3. Whether or not a stockpile of uranium was moved, we will not know, however the images or stories of trucks being seen are not even necessary for them to have an ability underground to move things around.
4. Though high ranking scientists and military commanders have been killed, the Iranian regime has working relationships with nations like North Korea who will be furious by these actions of the President, and Iranian nuclear emissions remain firmly in tact.

From the scientific analysis, the odd rush from the administration to claim victory, and common sense thinking, it seems that the hardened targets and nuclear program itself in Iran, are all mostly operational. Less than 25% of those sites were destroyed as far as we can tell at the moment. Roughly speaking, approximately 50% of the publicly stated mission of totally obliterating Iran’s nuclear program was accomplished. Without being able to see underground in Iran, we can safely say that the President's analysis is incorrect, personally and politically motivated, and not to be taken seriously.

Who Deserves Blame For This Historic Failure

The commander in chief Donald John Trump, and Secretary of Defense Peter Brian Hegseth are both to blame for this. They authorized these strikes, and failed to do sufficient diligence to ensure the safety of our soldiers, as well as the fulfillment of expressed military objectives. The bomb makers, aircraft manufacturers, military officers and pilots all did their jobs. They were just set up to fail by their commander in chief. Whether you believe in these people or like them personally or not, it is clear and evident that they lack the intelligence to be in command of our troops. They are endangering us abroad, and domestically, with this massive display of incompetence.