Bombarding Iran’s underground nuclear plant may not be effective, says an expert
An American attack against an Iranian key nuclear installation may not be effective, even if the massive bunker-buster bombs of the US military are used, a national security expert familiar with the Iran program on Thursday said Thursday.
While 30,000 -pound bombs have been tested, they have never really been used and the exact nature of concrete and the metal that protects the site located at the bottom of a mountain, which the pumps would need to penetrate, are not completely known.
Joe Cortione, who has spent decades investigating the nuclear proliferation for Congress and other world leaders, told ABC News that, by attacking Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, he would paralyze his capacity for nuclear weapons, he would not eliminate it.
Aviators look at a GBU-57, or the massive artillery penetrator pump, at the Whiteman air base in Missouri on May 2, 2023.
US Air Force through AP, file
In the center of President Donald Trump about whether to attack Iran is the Nuclear Enrichment Center of Fordo in the northwest of Iran. It is said that 300 feet is built within a mountain, perhaps more, and reinforced with concrete, according to experts.
The United States weapon promoted as able to attack within the Fodo facilities, the GBU-57 A/B ESPERATOR Massive Pump, known as a “Bunter Bunker.” It is able to penetrate 200 feet deep into an underground objective and then explode, experts say.
A B-2 spirit returns to the base of the Whiteman Air Force, Missouri, from a deployment to Diego García, territory of the British Indian Ocean, May 9, 2025.
Airman Senior Devan Halstead/509th Bomb Ala/US Air Force
Cirincione said that using the unseeded weapon would not guarantee success.
“Fordo is not an easy goal. They made it very difficult to destroy for the United States,” he said. “Even [the bunker buster] You cannot penetrate 300 feet of mountain and reinforced concrete.
“You need to drop a bomb, which will dig a crater, and then another bomb in that crater and then another bomb, and then another,” he said. “And then you will only damage that part of the installation.”
Cortycione also pointed out that even if any damage is done, the Iranian government has knowledge, experience and, most importantly, sufficient uranium and centrifuges enriched in other locations, progress with relative ease.
“You can’t bombard that,” he told ABC News. “You can slow it down, but they can collect and start quickly and know it.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency approved this week a resolution that declared that Iran had breached its non -proliferation agreements and has been illegally storing enriched uranium.
“I’ve been there, it’s half underground mile,” said Rafael Grossi, general director of the OIEA, on the fordo plant, as reported by the New York Times.
Days after the OIEA acted, the Israeli forces attacked Iranian objectives after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Iranian government could create a nuclear weapon “in a very short time.”
Iranian officials have dismissed Israel’s statements that they are building a nuclear weapon.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told journalists on Thursday that the president would make a decision on attacking Iran “in two weeks.”
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Israel, on June 13, 2025, President Donald Trump in Washington, on June 18, 2025 and the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, on June 13, 2025.
AFP through Getty Images/EPA-EFE/ShuttersTock
Cortinione emphasized that continuous military strikes would not be a good option for Israel or the United States if the goal is an Iran without nuclear weapons.
“Once he acknowledges that there is no military solution for this problem, military solutions can only be threats to Iran and the only answer is to get them to accept to go back and finish their abilities,” he said.
