Israel bombed Iran’s Fordow nuclear bunker site south of Tehran again Monday, following the U.S.’s strikes on the secretive underground facility over the weekend, according to media outlets in Israel and Tehran.
“The aggressor attacked the Fordow nuclear site again,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported, quoting a spokesperson for the crisis management authority in Qom, where Fordow is located.
The Jerusalem Post also reported the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the latest strike on Fordow, adding the aim was to “obstruct access routes” to the site to prevent the evacuation of nuclear enrichment materials and equipment.
President Trump touted the “monumental damage” from the U.S.’s surprise strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in a Truth Social post Sunday evening.
“Obliteration is an accurate term!,” he wrote. “The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday the Trump administration has a “high degree of confidence” about the impact of Saturday’s “Operation Midnight Hammer” strike campaign Saturday.
“We are confident, yes, that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated, as the president said in his address to the nation on Saturday night,” Leavitt told ABC News.
Satellite imagery and international assessments have raised questions about the scope of damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities, though.
The United Nations-led nuclear watchdog said Monday the bombing likely caused “very significant” damage to Fordow but called for inspections to assess the full scope.
“At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said in a statement. “Given the explosive payload utilised and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”
Meanwhile, Iranian officials have been coyer with Tehran’s assessment of the impact.
The BBC reported that Hassan Abedini, deputy political director of Iran’s state broadcaster, said during a broadcast that Iran had evacuated the site a “while ago” and Iran “didn’t suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out.”
The Fordow site became a focal point of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran ahead of the U.S.’s surprise strike because the American military had the weaponry necessary to strike the facility, which is buried in a mountain, while Israel did not.
An analysis from the independent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists based on the most recent IAEA report on Fordow’s enrichment program concluded that Iran had enough centrifuges and uranium hexafluoride gas at the site to produce several nuclear weapons.
“Fordow is, therefore, a crucially important place if one attempts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” the Bulletin’s analysts wrote last week. “If Israel decides to continue down the military path against Iran’s nuclear program, it has no choice but to ensure that the Fordow enrichment plant no longer poses a threat.”
