Fordow: Is What’s to Come Still Unsure?

Fordow is both the most important and the most difficult target among the Iranian nuclear facilities that Israel needs to destroy to assure itself, and the world (that unintended beneficiary of Israel’s battlefield achievements) that Iran’s nuclear project has been reduced to nothingness. More on Fordow’s impenetrability, built as it is deep inside a mountain, and how that may be overcome by the IDF, can be found here: “Israel’s plan to strike Fordow nuclear facility ready if order is given – IDF,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, June 17, 2025:

The IDF on Tuesday said that it has a ready plan for striking Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility the moment that the political echelon gives the order.

Until now, IDF officials have been evasive when asked about when they would attack Fordow, though there were a few open denials that the IDF had already attacked Fordow, when such false reports came out over the weekend.

Fordow is the most important Iranian nuclear facility, which the IDF has not yet touched, but it poses unique challenges, as it lies underneath a mountain.

Since the IDF lacks a mega 30,000 bunker buster bomb, which the US possesses, Israel has been trying to convince Washington to take out the facility.

However, despite lacking that bomb, the air force has other techniques for damaging or causing cave-ins at Fordow, such as repeatedly dropping 5,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs over and over again in the same spots….

A day earlier, the media reported that Trump had told Netanyahu flat out not to kill the Supreme Leader. That was a made-up story, put out by those who wanted to suggest a growing rift between Trump and Netanyahu. It was false. Trump has said “we are not going to take him out (kill) at least not for now.” “At least not for now” means he would be perfectly willing, if circumstances warrant, to have the Israelis kill Khamenei.

Trump also posted this: “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

Those are words Trump is unlikely to walk back.

The IDF naturally hopes that Trump will either supply it with the 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, and the B-2 Spirit bombers big enough to carry such a load, or that he will have the U.S. Air Force do the job itself of bombing Fordow, which may happen if the Iranians turn down Trump’s demand for an “unconditional surrender.” And they will.

But while waiting for that bunker buster bomb to be delivered to it by the Americans, or delivered in another sense to the Iranians, the IDF is not going to leave Fordow alone. By the time this is published, the IDF may have already been dropping a series of 5,000 pound bombs one after the other, hoping by such repetition to open up a gap in the hundreds-of-meters thick carapace of earth, rock, and-concrete.

The Iranians have not yet replied to President Trump’s demand that they offer “unconditional surrender.” Perhaps they are too stunned at how many setbacks they have suffered in a mere five days, so many airbases destroyed, so many nuclear sites of every kind blown up, so many senior generals and nuclear scientists assassinated, that they are in a state of panic. And now their last hope — that Trump would somehow “stop” the IDF from attacking while he resumed negotiations with a much more pliant Iran — is gone. Fordow is about to be destroyed, slowly or quickly, either from a series of 5,000 pound bombs dropped one after the other into the same ever-deepening crater, or from a single 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb, delivered by the Israelis or, more likely, by the Americans, that should prove to be equal to the task. And if one such bomb doesn’t do the trick, then a second one will be dropped on long-suffering Fordow.

The fate of Fordow will become clear in the next two weeks.

Fordow, and The End of Fordow. Watch this space for the news that is likely to cheer you up.