War Starts Right Now, Say Iranian Military Forces. Will It?

There is a reasonable chance that Iran will refrain from all-out retaliation against US

- Jonathan Eyal

LONDON - The US strikes on Iran's nuclear installations had devastated its nuclear programmes, but the mission, code-named Operation Midnight Hammer, did not target Iranian troops or the country's people, said US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Mr Hegseth, in the first media briefing by the Pentagon on June 22 following the strikes, was thus emphasising a point made by President Donald Trump from the start of the operation: The United States does not want its strike on Iran's nuclear sites to be interpreted as the start of a broader American military engagement in the Middle East.

But whether Operation Midnight Hammer goes down in history as just a one-off spectacular display of US military power or whether the US attack will trigger a wider regional confrontation will ultimately depend on two key considerations: an assessment of the damage the US caused to Iran's nuclear installations, and Iran's response.

It is now clear that the US strikes on Iran were massive, much larger than they initially appeared.

Military analysts assumed that to destroy Fordow - Iran's top nuclear installation buried at depths of around 80m inside mountain rock - the US might need around three GBU-57 bombs, the massive "bunker buster" ordnance the Americans developed explicitly for this purpose.

In the event, however, the American military remained true to its tradition of "gold-plating" every military operation, of over-compensating by throwing huge resources at the mission. A total of no fewer than 12 of these monster high-precision bombs, each weighing 13,600kg, were dropped on Fordow alone, with a further two fired elsewhere.

In addition, a further 60 other missiles were fired on Iran from a US submarine and 125 various American jets.

General Dan Caine, the overall commander of all US forces, said at the Pentagon briefing that all three Iranian nuclear sites "sustained extremely severe damage and destruction".