Thread by @Silverback766

🧵 Preliminary Assessment: Strike on Fordow and Broader Target Package
Six GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) were reportedly deployed against the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. That level of coordination didn’t occur. At best, an access point was sealed.

At 30,000 lbs, primarily tungsten, it uses sheer mass, inertial guidance, time-delay fuses, and sequenced shock propagation to penetrate hardened underground targets. But Fordow was engineered with MOP logic in mind.

The MOP isn't built for explosive spectacle—it's built for depth.
Its architecture is defensive by design: arched tunnels, offset caverns, anti-penetration bedrock layers, and redundancies across ventilation, command and control, and IR-6 centrifuge arrays.

A single MOP hit won’t compromise the facility. Two might breach an entrance or ventilation shaft. To take out the core, you'd need a highly synchronized strike: precise timing, telemetry-verified vector convergence, and real-time battle damage layering.

Iran reports no core compromise, no disruption to enrichment activity, and no structural collapse.
Dropping six MOPs implies a serious logistical operation: either three B-2 Spirit bombers flying concurrently or two conducting repeat flyovers—deep inside contested airspace,

with no fighter escort, across one of the most surveilled radar corridors on the planet. If Fordow had truly been destroyed, we’d see the evidence: seismic signatures, electromagnetic disturbances, emergency response flights, crater patterns, and IR flashes

from beneath the mountain. Instead, the first "confirmation" came via a Twitter post from a fringe account based in northern Israel, claiming "Fordow is gone"—while promoting novelty trading cards featuring Hamas commanders.

Meanwhile, Tomahawk strikes on Natanz and Esfahan added little of substance. Block IV cruise missiles are slow, non-penetrative, and optimized for surface-level targets. They don’t defeat deeply buried infrastructure.

They damage outer layers, trip alarms, and create optical signatures for press cycles—not strategic delays. A 1,000-lb warhead won’t breach cascade chambers protected by 20 meters of reinforced concrete and geological shielding.

There is no Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data confirms structural compromise. No crater clusters. No multispectral flash analysis. No thermal residue. No BDA (Battle Damage Assessment) loop.

If Fordow resumes enrichment operations tomorrow, Washington may have just executed the most expensive psychological operation in the history of bunker-busting—without slowing Iran’s nuclear program by a single centrifuge rotation.

The message was political. The response from Tehran, if any, will be strategic.