Satellite images show extent of US bombing damage to Iran nuclear sites

In the wake of Midnight Hammer, the U.S. operation to bomb Iran’s three main nuclear sites, some of the first looks at damage to the locations are coming from satellite imagery of the secretive sites.

President Donald Trump said the three Iranian nuclear facilities hit by the U.S. on Saturday — Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz — were “completely and totally obliterated.”

But others in the administration have been more circumspect, saying a full battlefield damage assessment needs to be made first.

“I know that battle damage is of great interest. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday. “I think BDA is still pending and way too early to comment on what may or may not be there.”

Several experts and officials have given their assessments of the damage based off satellite imagery.

Fordo nuclear site

“It is clear that Fordow was also directly impacted, but the degree of damage inside the uranium enrichment halls can’t be determined with certainty,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Sunday, after the U.S. bombs targeted the most secretive of the Iranian nuclear sites. Fordow is an alternate spelling for Fordo.

Fordo, about 60 miles south of Tehran, is built inside a remote complex of mountains and is considered the key site to Iran’s uranium enrichment research.

The satellite images point to damage to Fordo in the form of several large diameter holes or craters across the site. A layer of blue ash spread over the facility also marks the impact of strikes. Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility appear to be blocked with dirt.

“While there was uncertainty over whether the facility had been damaged by the Israeli strikes, it’s certainly damaged now,” Sam Lair, research associate at the Middlebury Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, wrote on X.

“Looks like Fordo was hit with at least six Massive Ordinance Penetrators (MOPs) given the six craters,” Lair told ABC News. “However, it is possible that, given the reports that perhaps as 14 MOPs were used in the operation, that each crater was hit twice to improve depth of penetration, meaning as many as 12 MOPs were used. This would be consistent with the relatively few MOP craters.”

From the position of the craters, experts believe the strikes might have hit the ventilation shafts of the facility.

“This all suggests to us the facility has probably been severely damaged. However, it is hard to be sure until someone sees the inside,” Lair told ABC News.

Experts identified the blue/gray ash visible across the site as ejecta from the MOP impacts. “Certainly it is not a direct sign of radioactivity,” professor Jacopo Buongiorno of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told ABC News.

“The only piece of evidence of deep penetration is the amount of ejecta that the MOPs produced, but we cannot say for certain what was destroyed,” Decker Eveleth, an analyst at CNA, a Washington-based nonprofit, wrote on X.

Finally, the tunnel entrances appear to be covered in dirt. It is unclear whether this was done by the Iranians to protect the facility or if it is the result of the American strikes, experts say.

“The US may have attempted to strike the tunnel entrances, but we also saw trucks and other heavy equipment covering them with dirt two days ago. So, it’s not clear to me the US did or that it matters,” Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote on X.

“From these images and others, it looks like the tunnel entrances and the support building on site were not attacked, though the entrances had been partially buried by the Iranians in the day before the attack to help protect them,” Lair told ABC News.

Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center

Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center in central Iran has extensive new damage across the facility buildings following the U.S. attack, with over a dozen appearing totally destroyed, on top of the four already hit by previous Israeli attacks.

“The latest attacks early this morning damaged other buildings in Esfahan. In addition, we have established that entrances to underground tunnels at the site were impacted,” Grossi said in a statement on Sunday. Esfahan is an alternate spelling for Isfahan.

Much of the damage to the fuel plate plant on the north side was done the night of June 20-21 by the Israelis, satellite images from before indicate.

The U.S. attack, however, appears to have focused on the other part of the site, which is dedicated to the uranium conversion, according to Lair, damaging the majority of the buildings there.

Natanz Nuclear Facility

In Natanz, the largest Iranian nuclear enrichment center, a 18-foot diameter hole directly over part of the underground military complex is visible on top of the destruction of multiple buildings, according to Maxar, the satellite imagery service.

Natanz’s above-ground buildings had been heavily hit by Israeli strikes during the first week of the offensive, damaging two buildings, the electrical infrastructure, the main power supply building, as well as the emergency and backup generators, the IAEA had said.

The crater appears to show how the new attack focused instead on the underground facilities of Natanz. Akin to the crater at Fordo, experts told ABC News they believe the presence of one large crater at Natanz shows that multiple MOPs were used on the facility hitting the same crater more than once, to improve the depth of penetration.