Iran’s Natanz centrifuge facility, the crown jewel of Tehran’s uranium enrichment program, was effectively knocked out of commission through two distinct U.S.-led military operations separated by eight months. Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 destroyed 42 percent of the facility’s aboveground infrastructure and rendered 2,100 of 6,800 centrifuges inoperable, while Operation Epic Fury in late February 2026 sealed off the underground enrichment plant entirely by destroying its entrance buildings. The combined effect left Natanz’s remaining centrifuge cascades — 27 cascades of IR-2m and 12 cascades of IR-4 machines — either destroyed or physically unreachable. The story of Natanz’s destruction is not a single dramatic blow but a grinding, two-phase campaign that exposed both the strengths and limitations of bunker-busting strikes against deeply buried nuclear infrastructure. Midnight Hammer proved that even the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S.
arsenal, could not fully eliminate a hardened underground facility in one pass. Epic Fury took a different approach, targeting access points and support systems rather than trying to punch through to the enrichment hall again. This article examines what each operation actually accomplished at Natanz, what the IAEA has confirmed on the ground, the legal authority under which these strikes were carried out, and what the facility’s current status means for Iran’s nuclear timeline. The implications extend well beyond one facility in the Iranian desert. These operations set precedents for presidential war powers, the use of experimental weapons systems in combat, and the broader question of whether military force can permanently dismantle a nation’s nuclear capability or merely delay it.
Table of Contents
- How Did Operation Midnight Hammer Damage Natanz’s Centrifuge Infrastructure?
- What Was Operation Epic Fury and Why Was a Second Strike Necessary?
- What Did the IAEA Confirm About the Damage at Natanz?
- How Do Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury Compare in Strategy and Scope?
- What Are the Legal and Constitutional Questions Surrounding These Strikes?
- What Is the Current Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program After Both Operations?
- What Comes Next for Natanz and Nonproliferation Efforts?
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Did Operation Midnight Hammer Damage Natanz’s Centrifuge Infrastructure?
Operation Midnight Hammer began not with American bombers but with Israeli strikes on June 13, 2025, which hit significant portions of Natanz’s centrifuge hall, power supply systems, and support buildings. The IAEA confirmed that the underground centrifuge hall itself was struck during this initial phase. Eight days later, on June 21-22, the United States launched what became the largest B-2 operational strike in history. Seven B-2 spirit stealth bombers departed Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, supported by more than 125 additional aircraft, to strike Natanz and Iran’s other major enrichment site at fordow. The Midnight Hammer strikes marked the first-ever combat use of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bunker-buster designed specifically to reach deeply buried targets. Fourteen MOPs were deployed against the Fordow and Natanz enrichment facilities. The IAEA’s June 25, 2025 damage assessment found that 18 of 43 buildings at Natanz were destroyed, amounting to 42 percent of the aboveground infrastructure.
Underground, the enrichment hall suffered a 31 percent reduction in operational capacity. But the damage extended further than the direct bomb impacts suggested. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi reported that the sudden loss of external power caused by the Israeli strikes likely “severely damaged if not destroyed” all approximately 15,000 centrifuges at the facility. Centrifuges spinning at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute are extraordinarily sensitive to power interruptions — even a brief loss of electricity can cause cascading mechanical failures throughout an enrichment cascade. To put this in perspective, the comparison with Stuxnet is instructive. The famous U.S.-Israeli cyberattack discovered in 2010 destroyed roughly 1,000 centrifuges over many months through subtle manipulation of rotor speeds. Midnight Hammer’s combination of kinetic strikes and power disruption potentially damaged fifteen times that number in a matter of hours. However, there is an important caveat: “damaged” is not the same as “destroyed.” As subsequent months would demonstrate, some centrifuge cascades at Natanz continued operating after Midnight Hammer, producing enriched material that remained a proliferation concern.
What Was Operation Epic Fury and Why Was a Second Strike Necessary?
Despite the scale of Midnight Hammer’s destruction, the operation left a critical gap. The underground Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz, while severely degraded, was not fully eliminated. In the months between June 2025 and February 2026, centrifuges within the damaged facility were still spinning and producing enriched uranium — theoretically enough material for more than ten nuclear warheads. This uncomfortable reality made clear that Midnight Hammer, for all its historic firepower, had not accomplished the mission’s ultimate objective. Operation Epic Fury launched on February 28, 2026, codenamed “Roaring Lion” by the Israeli forces participating in the campaign. Its scope far exceeded Midnight Hammer’s relatively focused targeting of nuclear facilities. Epic Fury struck leadership compounds, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command-and-control centers, ballistic missile production sites, air defense networks, and naval forces across at least 12 Iranian cities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the operation’s goals as “laser-focused,” though the breadth of targets told a more complex story. The most significant U.S.
military action in the Middle East since the Iraq War, Epic Fury represented a strategic calculation that nuclear infrastructure alone was not enough — the military apparatus protecting and enabling Iran’s nuclear program also had to be degraded. However, if the goal was the outright physical destruction of the underground enrichment hall at Natanz, Epic Fury did not achieve that either. What it did accomplish was arguably more pragmatic. Iran confirmed that the Natanz nuclear complex was hit twice on March 1, 2026. The IAEA confirmed on March 3 that entrance buildings to the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant were damaged, rendering the entire facility inaccessible. The strategy had shifted: rather than trying to penetrate the hardened underground structure directly, Epic Fury sealed it shut. The IAEA noted that the FEP had already been “severely damaged in the June conflict,” and Epic Fury effectively closed the door on whatever remained by destroying both personnel and vehicle entrances. This approach has a significant limitation — it is potentially reversible. Rubble can be cleared, entrances can be rebuilt. But it bought time, and in nonproliferation strategy, time is often the most valuable currency.
What Did the IAEA Confirm About the Damage at Natanz?
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s assessments provide the most authoritative picture of what actually happened at Natanz, stripped of the political framing from Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran. After Midnight Hammer, the IAEA’s June 25, 2025 report confirmed specific, quantifiable damage: 18 of 43 buildings destroyed aboveground, a 31 percent reduction in underground operational capacity, and 2,100 of 6,800 centrifuges rendered inoperable from shockwave effects. Director General Grossi’s assessment that the power loss likely “severely damaged if not destroyed” all 15,000 centrifuges was notably more dire than the confirmed numbers, reflecting the difficulty of assessing damage to machinery sealed underground. After Epic Fury, the IAEA’s March 3, 2026 confirmation was more limited in detail but strategically significant. The agency confirmed that entrance buildings to the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant were damaged and the facility was inaccessible. This matters because IAEA inspectors themselves could no longer access the facility to verify its status — a development with serious implications for nonproliferation monitoring.
Without inspector access, the international community is left relying on satellite imagery and intelligence assessments rather than on-the-ground verification of centrifuge status, enrichment levels, and material inventories. One specific example illustrates the monitoring challenge. Before Epic Fury, the IAEA knew that Natanz housed 27 cascades of IR-2m centrifuges and 12 cascades of IR-4 centrifuges. The agency could track how much enriched uranium these cascades were producing and at what enrichment levels. With the facility sealed, that monitoring chain is broken. Iran’s enriched material — including stocks potentially sufficient for multiple nuclear warheads — is now sitting in a facility that neither inspectors nor Iranian technicians can currently reach. Whether that material remains secure, degrades, or could eventually be recovered is an open question that the IAEA cannot presently answer.
How Do Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury Compare in Strategy and Scope?
The two operations reflect fundamentally different military philosophies applied to the same problem. Midnight Hammer was a targeted strike focused narrowly on nuclear infrastructure. Seven B-2 bombers, 14 bunker-busters, and supporting aircraft hit enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow with the goal of directly destroying centrifuge capacity. The approach was surgical in concept, even if the 30,000-pound MOP is anything but surgical in practice. The tradeoff was precision over breadth — Midnight Hammer hit what it aimed at but left the broader Iranian military and command infrastructure intact. Epic Fury inverted that equation. While Natanz was struck again, the operation targeted at least 12 Iranian cities and went after the full spectrum of Iran’s military capability: IRGC command nodes, ballistic missile factories, air defense systems, naval assets, and leadership targets. The nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan were part of a much larger campaign.
This broader approach carried its own tradeoffs. Striking across a wider target set increased the risk of civilian casualties and escalation while diluting the nuclear-specific messaging that Midnight Hammer had maintained. But it also addressed a lesson from Midnight Hammer’s aftermath: destroying centrifuges means little if Iran retains the military infrastructure to protect a reconstitution effort and the missile capability to threaten retaliation against anyone who might strike again. The comparison reveals a strategic evolution. Midnight Hammer asked whether overwhelming force against a single target could solve the Iran nuclear problem. The answer was: partially, but not durably. Epic Fury asked whether degrading the entire ecosystem around the nuclear program — the command structure, the delivery systems, the air defenses — could achieve what brute-force bunker busting could not. That answer remains incomplete, as Iran’s technical knowledge and dispersed supply chains cannot be bombed out of existence.
What Are the Legal and Constitutional Questions Surrounding These Strikes?
President Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury under a War Powers notification accompanied by a Gang of Eight briefing — the classified intelligence briefing limited to the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees. No formal address to Congress occurred, and no Authorization for Use of Military Force was sought. This follows a pattern established across multiple administrations of both parties but raises questions that become more pressing as the scale of military action increases. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and limits unauthorized deployments to 60 days, with a 30-day withdrawal period. The Gang of Eight briefing satisfies some notification requirements, but critics argue that an operation of Epic Fury’s magnitude — strikes across at least 12 cities in a sovereign nation, the largest U.S. military action in the Middle East since Iraq — warrants more than a classified briefing to eight legislators.
The counterargument, employed by administrations of both parties, is that operational security requirements and the need for rapid action in the face of an imminent nuclear threat justify the limited notification. There is a practical limitation to this debate that often goes unacknowledged. Congressional authorization, or the lack of it, has not historically constrained U.S. military action in any meaningful operational sense. The strikes happened. The legal arguments about their authorization will play out in think-tank papers and potentially in court challenges long after the strategic consequences have been determined. For accountability-focused observers, the more actionable question may be whether Congress will use its appropriations power and oversight authority to shape what comes next — the reconstruction, the diplomatic aftermath, and the terms of any eventual settlement with Iran.
What Is the Current Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program After Both Operations?
The combined effect of Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury has left Iran’s three major declared nuclear sites — Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan — in various states of damage and inaccessibility. Natanz’s underground Fuel Enrichment Plant is sealed off, with its centrifuge cascades either destroyed or unreachable. The aboveground infrastructure that supported enrichment operations, power supply, and logistics is largely demolished. According to the IAEA and independent analyses from institutions like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the operational nuclear enrichment capacity that Iran maintained before June 2025 has been effectively neutralized for the near term.
But “near term” is doing significant work in that sentence. Iran’s nuclear knowledge base — the scientists, engineers, and technical documentation accumulated over decades — cannot be destroyed by airstrikes. The Stimson Center’s post-Epic Fury analysis frames the central debate clearly: military operations can destroy hardware and delay timelines, but they cannot erase capability. Iran enriched uranium to 60 percent purity before these strikes, a short technical step from the 90 percent needed for weapons-grade material. Whether Iran chooses to reconstitute its program, and how quickly it could do so, depends on factors that bombs cannot control — political will in Tehran, the state of international diplomacy, and whether a durable agreement emerges from the current crisis.
What Comes Next for Natanz and Nonproliferation Efforts?
The destruction at Natanz creates a narrow window for diplomacy that did not exist when centrifuges were spinning. With its enrichment infrastructure inaccessible and its military degraded across multiple domains, Iran faces a strategic calculation about whether to invest years and billions rebuilding a program that has now been struck twice in eight months, or to negotiate from a position that, while weakened, still holds leverage in the form of technical expertise and dispersed nuclear knowledge. The precedent set by Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury extends beyond Iran.
Other nations pursuing nuclear capability — or considering it — are watching how the international community responds to the use of force against nuclear facilities. If the result is a durable diplomatic settlement that constrains Iran’s program with verifiable limits, the operations may be viewed as coercive diplomacy that worked. If Iran reconstitutes its program within a few years, or if the lack of IAEA access leads to an even more opaque and dangerous nuclear effort, the operations will look like an expensive delay that made the underlying problem harder to solve. The next chapter depends less on what bombs did to Natanz and more on what diplomats, legislators, and institutions do with the time those bombs purchased.
Conclusion
Iran’s Natanz centrifuge facility was systematically dismantled across two operations with distinct strategies and overlapping results. Midnight Hammer’s June 2025 strikes destroyed 42 percent of aboveground infrastructure and severely damaged the underground enrichment capacity, with the IAEA confirming 2,100 centrifuges rendered inoperable and potentially all 15,000 damaged by power disruption. Eight months later, Epic Fury sealed the underground facility by destroying its entrances, making the enrichment plant inaccessible to both Iranian technicians and international inspectors.
Together, these operations represent the most significant military action against a nation’s nuclear infrastructure in history. The questions that remain are not military but political and institutional. Can the IAEA regain access to verify Natanz’s status? Will Congress assert its constitutional role in authorizing or constraining further military action? Will the destruction of hardware translate into a diplomatic agreement that addresses the underlying knowledge and intent that no bomb can reach? These are the questions that will determine whether the campaigns against Natanz amount to a turning point or a pause in a much longer confrontation over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Natanz completely destroyed by these operations?
Not entirely. The underground Fuel Enrichment Plant was severely damaged by Midnight Hammer and rendered inaccessible by Epic Fury, but the IAEA noted the core underground facility was not fully destroyed. The aboveground infrastructure suffered 42 percent destruction after the June 2025 strikes, with additional damage in February 2026.
How many centrifuges were at Natanz before the strikes?
Natanz housed approximately 15,000 centrifuges, including 27 cascades of IR-2m and 12 cascades of IR-4 centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed 2,100 of 6,800 centrifuges in one section were rendered inoperable by shockwave damage, while Director General Grossi assessed that power loss likely severely damaged all 15,000.
What is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator?
The GBU-57 MOP is a 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb designed to strike deeply buried, hardened targets. Operation Midnight Hammer marked its first-ever use in combat, with 14 MOPs deployed against the Fordow and Natanz enrichment facilities.
Did Congress authorize these military operations?
President Trump authorized Epic Fury under a War Powers notification with a Gang of Eight briefing — the classified briefing limited to top congressional leaders and intelligence committee heads. No formal Congressional authorization or address was sought for either operation.
Can Iran rebuild its nuclear enrichment capability?
Iran retains the scientific knowledge and technical expertise to reconstitute its enrichment program, though rebuilding destroyed infrastructure would take years and significant resources. The military strikes destroyed hardware but cannot erase decades of accumulated nuclear knowledge.
What is the IAEA’s current access to Natanz?
As of March 2026, the IAEA confirmed that entrance buildings to the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant were destroyed, rendering the facility inaccessible. This means international inspectors cannot currently verify the status of centrifuges or enriched material inside the facility.