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The White House maintains that last month’s Operation Midnight Hammer “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites despite a new report from The New York Times suggesting Israeli officials have concluded some enriched uranium survived the targeted U.S. attack.
According to the Times, a portion of the stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium located underground survived bombs dropped by B-2 stealth bombers June 21, 2025, which may still be accessible to Iranian nuclear engineers.
When asked about the report, Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, told Fox News, “As President Trump has said many times, Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities. The entire world is safer thanks to his decisive leadership.”
The White House’s messaging reiterates what President Donald Trump has said since the night of the attacks, which is that Iran’s nuclear sites were “totally obliterated.”
OPERATION MIDNIGHT HAMMER: HISTORIC B-2 BOMBER MISSION FLEW FROM MISSOURI TO STRIKE IRANIAN NUCLEAR SITES
Operation Midnight Hammer commenced when B-2 stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri at 12:01 a.m. June 21. Some of the bombers flew west and into the Pacific as a decoy, while the main strike force of seven B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, flew silently eastward with minimal communication as they undertook the 18-hour flight to the target area.
The flight required the aircraft to refuel multiple times without landing, and when overland, the strike group linked up with escort and support aircraft from Central Command.
At about 5 p.m. EST, a U.S. submarine launched over two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets as the main strike force entered Iranian airspace.
MIDNIGHT HAMMER IS ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’ BUT THERE’S ONE BIG RED FLAG
Additional tactics were used to deceive Iranian forces as the B-2 strike group approached Fordow and Natanz. A total of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) weapons, commonly known as bunker-busters, were dropped on Fordow and Natanz, while Tomahawk missiles launched by U.S. submarines were last to strike, hitting targets at Isfahan.
After the mission, Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. military carried out “massive precision strikes on three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.”
Trump also addressed the nation on television, touting the success of Operation Midnight Hammer.
“Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Trump said. “And Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.”
PENTAGON FLEXES US MILITARY’S DECOYS AND STRATEGIC DECEPTION THAT TOOK IRAN AND WORLD BY SURPRISE
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have railed against the “fake news” media ever since the attacks for casting doubt that the U.S. strikes on Iran destroyed the country’s nuclear program.
While at a NATO summit last month, Hegseth slammed CNN and The New York Times, arguing they work “to find a way to spin” the news.
“There’s a reason the president calls out fake news for what it is,” Hegseth said. “These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders. The skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people and the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom.”
“And then the instinct, the instinct of CNN, the instinct of the New York Times, is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons, to try to hurt President Trump or our country,” he added. “They don’t care what the troops think. They don’t care what the world thinks. They want to spin it to try to make him look bad based on a leak.
“Of course, we’ve all seen plenty of leakers. And what [do] leakers do? They have agendas. And what do they do? Do they share the whole information or just the part that they want to introduce?”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
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