The Maxar frame confirms it: Fordow’s heart is still beating.
Despite the drop of at least 6 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators, the imagery shows that the damage pattern skirts the outer shell of the site. Crater geometry and spacing are consistent with volley-mode sequencing designed to minimize shock front overlap, but all visible penetrations hug the periphery, either due to mis-queued coordinates or deliberate decoying via the site’s curved adit network.
The visible ejecta tells its own story. Opacity is low in the VNIR band, indicating a dust-only loft, no oxidized blast pattern, no epithermal signature, no heat venting. This means the warheads expended most of their energy in the overburden. No concentric spalling rings, no radial fractures exceeding 50 meters, and no post-strike IR bloom to indicate a breach of the core’s thermal envelope. The shallow subsidence patch at the upper center measures less than 10 meters across and under half a meter deep, nowhere near the magnitude required to indicate a cascade hall collapse.
What is visible is denial work. Fresh spoil piles flank the tunnel mouths at the southern bend, light-toned and loosely compacted, indicative of rapid back-blading by engineering crews, not post-strike structural failure. This suggests Iran moved quickly to obscure ingress points, either to mask internal survivability or mislead further ISR analysis.
The main enrichment halls, estimated at -90 meters below surface, remain sealed, pressurized, and likely electrically fed via alternate routing. What was damaged is surface infrastructure: access shafts, intake routes, possibly control galleries. All of it replaceable. None of it critical to cascade function.
Washington may claim a show of force, but Fordow endures. The media got their mushroom dust, the Pentagon got its footage, and Iran got a live test of its subterranean resilience. The deeper program survives, untouched beneath 90 meters of mountain.
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Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) on X
The Maxar frame confirms it: Fordow’s heart is still beating.
Despite the drop of at least 6 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators, the imagery...
