The US military has drawn up plans to hit Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites with the so-called ‘Mother of all Bombs’ should Donald Trump give the green light, according to a report.
US officials familiar with the designs told CNN that the military was preparing to use its GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) in a significant escalation of the conflict with Iran.
The MOAB is the largest non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal, although the outlet reported doubts around how effective its use would be towards achieving the president’s goals.
The conflict in the Middle East, which began with US-Israeli attacks in February, has slowed to an impasse since the collapse of a June interim agreement to end the war.
President Trump had sought to ensure Iran would never gain access to nuclear weapons, but eight months on Iran has unprecedented influence over the vital Strait of Hormuz, and Trump’s popularity is waning at home ahead of the November midterm elections.
According to CNN, Trump and his advisors have spent months discussing options for a ‘definitive’ act to end the war, noting the growing unpopularity among US voters.
One unnamed source told the outlet that Trump has ordered the military to develop additional strike packages that include “a lot of energy infrastructure” and could foreseeably use a MOAB.
Another source said the plans include striking nuclear sites including the so-called Pickaxe Mountain, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to target in recent weeks.
The United States last year carried out a blitz of strikes on the underground nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, using GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) “bunker-buster” bombs to penetrate through metres of rock and soil.
Seven B-2 bombers dropped a total of 14 of the 14,000kg bombs on Fordow and Natanz, while Isfahan was hit with more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles fired from a US submarine.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said at the time that the attacks “took months and weeks of positioning and preparation” to pull off once Trump gave the order. But a report from the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) soon after assessed the strikes had only set back operations by a matter of months.
The US then argued that Iran was getting too close to being able to produce a nuclear weapon, but the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it had no credible indication of a coordinated weapons programme.
But Iran was enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, a short step from the roughly 90 per cent of weapons grade. The IAEA estimates Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% when the first bombs fell.
That is enough, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran also had stocks of uranium enriched to lower levels.
No other country has enriched uranium to such a high level without producing nuclear weapons. The US and its European allies say there is no civil justification. But Iran has long held that it does not want and is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
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