There is a skull at the center of the image with a ‘Star of David’ on its forehead – a symbol on the Israeli flag generally representing both Jewish identity and Judaism.
US pilots dropped 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran. American sailors bolstered the surprise mission by firing dozens of cruise missiles from a submarine toward at least one other site.Dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, US officials told media that the plan was characterised by a “precision strike” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear programme,” even as they acknowledged an assessment was ongoing.
For its part, Iran denied that any significant damage had been done, and the Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate.Taking off from the US heartland, B-2 stealth bombers delivered a total of 420,000 pounds of explosives, aided by an armada of refuelling tankers and fighter jets — some of which launched their own weapons. At 6:40 pm in Washington and 2:10 am in Tehran, the first B-2 bomber dropped its pair of GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrators on the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant.
It was the first time these so-called “bunker busters” had ever been used in combat. Each 30,000-pound bomb is designed to burrow into the ground before detonating a massive warhead.
The Fordo site received the bulk of the bombardment, though a couple of the enormous bombs were also dropped on a uranium enrichment site at Natanz.
Both Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the sites.
The mission included: 75 precision-guided weapons: these included 14 GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs deployed by the seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and more than two-dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a US submarine, 125 aircraft, including the B-2 bombers, fighter jets and refuelling planes.
With inputs from Agencies
