Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow: What we know about Operation Midnight Hammer as US strikes Iran’s nuclear facilities
Details are emerging about the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The US military has provided details about which sites have been hit and what military elements have been used, as President Donald Trump hailed the attack on social media.
From the number of bunker buster bombs dropped to where they hit, here’s what we know so far.
Follow latest: US bombers strike three Iranian nuclear sites
How did ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ unfold?
The US’s most senior military official gave details of how the attack, named Operation Midnight Hammer, unfolded.
A US Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber. File pic: Reuters
General Dan Caine, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said that at midnight on Friday, a large “B-2 strike package of bombers” launched from the US, flying east across the Atlantic.
To maintain the element of surprise, some other bombers flew west into the Pacific.
During the 18-hour flight, the planes underwent multiple rounds of refuelling.
As the seven B-2 bombers entered Iran, the US deployed “several decoys”, according to Gen Caine, and a US submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Isfahan nuclear site.
At around 6.40pm EST on Saturday, the first B-2 bomber dropped two GBU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons, known as bunker buster bombs, on Fordow.
“The remaining bombers then hit their targets,” said Gen Caine, with 14 GBU-57s dropped in total.
Bunker buster bombs are designed to explode twice. Once to breach the ground surface, and again, once the bomb has burrowed down to a certain depth.
A satellite image showing two clusters of holes at the Fordow nuclear site in Iran following US strikes on the facility. Pic: Maxar
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Iran’s nuclear ambitions ‘obliterated’
Israel has bunker busters in its arsenal but does not have the much more powerful GBU-57, which can only be launched from the B-2 bomber and was believed to be the only bomb capable of breaching Fordow.
This attack was the GBU-57s’ first operational use.
A file picture of a GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which was possibly used in the attack on Fordow. Pic: AP
More than 75 weapons were used in total, including 14 30,000lb GBU-57 bunker buster bombs, and 125 aircraft took part.
The New York Times reported a US official as saying a B-2 also dropped two of the GBU-57s on the Natanz nuclear site.
The B-2s were all heading back towards the US by 7.05pm (EST), Gen Caine added, and he said the US military were not aware of any shots fired at the American jets by Iranian aircraft or air defences on the ground.
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‘US strikes won’t end Iran’s nuclear programme’
Which sites were hit?
America says it has hit the three key locations in Iran’s nuclear programme.
The US attacked the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites in Iran
They include Isfahan, the location of a significant research base, as well as uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow.
Read more: Fordow: What we know about Iran’s secretive ‘nuclear mountain’
Natanz was believed to have been previously damaged in Israeli strikes after bombs disrupted power to the centrifuge hall, possibly destroying the machines indirectly.
Details about the damage in the US strikes are not yet known, although Mr Trump said the three sites had been “obliterated”.
The US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth said the US had “devastated the Iranian nuclear programme”.
However, most of the highly enriched uranium at the Fordow nuclear facility was moved to an undisclosed location ahead of the attack, a senior Iranian source told the Reuters news agency.
Personnel numbers were also reduced at the site, according to the report.
16 cargo trucks line up at the entrance of the Fordow nuclear site on 19 June. Pic: Maxar Technologies
Satellite images from Fordow show cargo trucks lining up at the entrance of the nuclear site in recent days.
How has Iran responded so far?
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned that the US strikes “will have everlasting consequences”, adding that his country “reserves all options” to retaliate.
“The events this morning are outrageous and will have everlasting consequences,” Mr Araghchi wrote on X. “Each and every member of the UN must be alarmed over this extremely dangerous, lawless and criminal behaviour.”
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Sirens in Israel as Iran retaliates
Iran has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to “maintain international peace and condemn the US strikes”, according to state media.
Read more:
What happens next is largely in Iran’s control
Multiple places in Israel have been hit by Iranian missiles in response.
Several explosions have been heard over Tel Aviv with Israeli media saying missiles have hit northern and central Israel, including in Haifa, Ness Ziona, Rishon LeZion and Tel Aviv.
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Destruction in Israel after Iranian strikes
Sixteen casualties were reported by the country’s emergency services.
Abbas Golroo, head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy committee, also said in a statement on social media Iran could pull out of efforts to limit the spread of nuclear technology and weapons, called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
He cited Article 10 of the treaty, which states that an NPT member has “the right to withdraw from the treaty if it decides that extraordinary events have jeopardised the supreme interests of its country”.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Read more from Sky News:
UK restores diplomatic ties with Syria
Church in Syria targeted by suicide bomber
Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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