{"id":51603,"date":"2025-06-24T15:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T09:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=51603"},"modified":"2025-06-25T11:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T06:12:06","slug":"operation-midnight-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/operation-midnight-hammer\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Midnight Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Operation Midnight Hammer Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The operation that the US launched on Iran was named Operation Midnight Hammer, the Pentagon announced recently.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>About Operation Midnight Hammer<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the codename for a covert <\/span><b>U.S.\u2013led military strike on Iran&#8217;s nuclear facilities<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> carried out around midnight on <\/span><b>June 21\u201322, 2025.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It aimed <\/span><b>to cripple Iran&#8217;s nuclear program.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The coordinated assault <\/span><b>involved over 125 military aircraft<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, including <\/span><b>B-2 stealth bombers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the deployment of <\/span><b>14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and more than 30 <\/span><b>Tomahawk missiles launched from US submarines in <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This attack was the <\/span><b>first time<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that the <\/span><b>United States used its largest bunker-busting bomb, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), in an operational conflict.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Targeted Sites:<\/b>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The operation targeted two u<\/span><b>ranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>one facility at Isfahan<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which conducts several activities related to Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Natanz and Fordow <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are the <\/span><b>only operational enrichment facilities in Iran.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US <\/span><b>attacked Natanz and Fordow with B-2 bombers equipped with MOPs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and only attacked I<\/span><b>sfahan with Tomahawk cruise missiles.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Why is Fordow so important?<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Located deep within a mountain<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 29 kilometers north of the Iranian city of Qom, the Fordow uranium enrichment facility stands as a <\/span><b>highly protected and strategically central site within Iran\u2019s nuclear program.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Its subterranean placement provides significant <\/span><b>protection against potential aerial bombardment<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a design choice indicative of its critical role.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The facility is approximately 54,000 square feet and is <\/span><b>believed to house 3,000 centrifuges.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Under the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was explicitly prohibited from conducting enrichment activities at Fordow.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>However, following the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in 2018 during the first Trump administration, <\/span><b>Iran resumed enrichment activities at the site.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Source:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/us\/what-is-operation-midnight-hammer-us-reveals-details-of-deliberate-precise-strike-on-iran\/articleshow\/122006417.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TOI<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Operation Midnight Hammer is the codename for a covert U.S.\u2013led military strike on Iran&#8217;s nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":51692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1003,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-51603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-operation-midnight-hammer","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}