US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the ventilation shaft Iran had installed at its underground nuclear facility in Fordow worked to America’s advantage, ensuring the success of June’s airstrikes.
“They have a chute that goes right down deep into the mountain. And they shouldn’t have put ventilation in, I can tell you that, because we used it to our advantage,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The United States struck three Iranian nuclear facilities — at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow — with long-range bombers and submarine-launched missiles on June 22.
The operation, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, involved B-2 stealth bombers armed with 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) — so-called “bunker busters” designed to penetrate fortified underground facilities.
“The United States studied Fordow for 15 years, identified its weaknesses, and developed weapons for that exact purpose — which led to modifications of the MOP used during the attack,” General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on June 26.
Ventilation shafts were the most effective entry point identified in planning analysis, Caine said, adding that a total of 14 MOPs were dropped on targets at Fordow and Natanz.
“We’re looking at the mission you just accomplished with Iran — 36 hours back and forth. Flawless. Every bomb hit its target. They went right down those chutes. Dark at night, no moon, no nothing. Every target, every bomb went right down,” Trump added.
Trump praised the precision strikes and said Iran’s nuclear facilities targeted in the attacks were “totally obliterated.”
The opposite of what Carter did in Iran
Trump compared the June 22 attacks on Iran to the Carter administration’s failed hostage rescue mission on April 24, 1980, calling it the “exact opposite.”
“We had 52 tankers — people don’t realize — so that they could refuel. We had many fighter jets, F-22s, F-35s. It was an amazing operation. It was flawless,” Trump said.
“Compare that to the operation when they went in with the helicopters crashing, everyone running around the desert, and prisoners being taken. And there was Jimmy Carter. What a horrible thing. This was the exact opposite,” Trump added.
The Tabas attack, known as Operation Eagle Claw, was an effort ordered by President Jimmy Carter to rescue 52 American diplomats taken hostage in Iran by revolutionary forces.
Eight helicopters were sent to a staging area called Desert One in the Tabas Desert, but only five arrived operational due to hydraulic problems, a sandstorm, and a cracked rotor blade.
The mission was aborted due to insufficient functioning helicopters. During withdrawal, a helicopter collided with a C-130 transport plane, killing eight American servicemen and destroying both aircraft.
“Those who, out of negligence or with certain motives, issued a statement should admit their mistake and retract this disgraceful act,” Judiciary Chief Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejei said Monday, reacting to a call by Iran's Reform Front for direct US talks and full IAEA monitoring.
"Tehran's prosecutor will act according to his legal duty in this matter," Ejei added, speaking in a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
Ejei's warning comes after Iran’s Reform Front, on August 17, called for major political and nuclear policy shifts, including a voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment.
The coalition of 27 reformist organizations, in a statement, said “Iran’s social fabric was deeply wounded, with public life overshadowed by despair and anxiety.”
The statement urged the government to declare readiness for suspending enrichment and to accept full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Such a step, it said, could open the way for “comprehensive, direct negotiations with the United States and normalization of relations.”
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, however, rejected direct talks with the United States on Sunday, insisting that Washington’s hostility cannot be resolved through talks.
“Those who say, ‘Don’t chant slogans against America, they’ll get upset and become hostile toward you,’ are superficial. Those who argue, ‘Why don’t you negotiate directly with the United States and solve your problems?’ are, in my view, also superficial. That’s not the reality of the matter; this issue cannot be resolved," Khamenei said.
Iran's Supreme Leader said the enemies of the Islamic Republic seek to create division inside the country and to sow discord from within in order to bring about a regime change.
"They have agents inside: agents of Zionism and of America, present here and there in the country. Through them — or through those who are heedless of what they say and write — they try to create divisions among the people and generate discordant voices in the nation," he said in an apparent reference to the moderate critics of his policies.
