New satellite images taken Sunday reveal Iran has significantly accelerated engineering work around the craters created by last week's US strike on the Fordo nuclear facility. The photos show an excavator operating near one of the craters, as well as a sand conveyor removing soil from the site. The crater is near ventilation shafts that were targeted during the strike, and Iran appears to have made substantial progress clearing the area.
Images from two days earlier had indicated that initial engineering activity had begun, but the latest photographs suggest Iran is now working to reopen access to the underground facility. Nonetheless, the paved access tunnels leading deeper into the mountain remain blocked by sand piles, apparently placed there by Iran before the attack.
Five days after the US strike on Fordo, satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed engineering equipment near bomb craters carved into the mountainside by B-2 bombers. At the time, machinery resembling an excavator and vehicles near the facility were observed. In the days that followed, Israel launched its own strikes on access routes to the site in an attempt to prevent further entry.
In a press conference, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Kane said that 12 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs, each weighing more than 13 tons, were used in the Fordo attack. He said the bombs breached the underground complex through ventilation shafts at two different points. Kane explained that these munitions had been in development for 15 years specifically for this mission, and satellite imagery had long shown the ventilation infrastructure.
The first two bombs reportedly shattered the concrete layers Iran had laid over the shafts, followed by additional bombs fired at speeds exceeding 1,100 kilometers per hour (683 mph), which struck the intended targets. Kane quoted one of the pilots as saying, "It was the brightest explosion I've ever seen, the night turned into day."
