‘15 Years of Incredible Work’: The Inside Story of the Mission to Bomb Iran’s Nuclear Sites
June 26, 2025 | By Chris Gordon
The 36-hour operation by the U.S. military to fly deep into Iranian airspace and drop massive bunker-buster bombs on a heavily fortified nuclear complex traces its roots to the work of intelligence analysts over 15 years ago, according to a new account from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine.
On June 22, seven U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropped 12 30,000-pound bombs on the Fordow enrichment complex, which is built inside of a mountain. But this was no hasty operation. Rather, the U.S. began grappling with the challenge of how to destroy Fordow soon after Iranians began building it.
Iran began working on Fordow in 2006, experts on the Iranian program say. In 2009, an analyst at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was shown photographs of a major construction project in the mountains of Iran.
The DTRA is a little-known part of the Department of Defense that is charged with countering weapons of mass destruction and which is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Va., a short distance from Washington, D.C.
Soon after the first analyst started, another intelligence official was brought in.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/inside-story-b-2-mission-bomb-iran-nuclear-sites/
