The American Nuclear Society's 6 April 2026 relay of the IAEA Director-General's monitoring report confirms Fordow has not been reactivated since Operation Midnight Hammer on 22 June 20254. Twelve GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, six per ventilation shaft across two shafts, were delivered by seven B-2 stealth bombers; Gen. Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, stated at the time that "all six weapons at each vent went exactly where they were intended to go." Satellite imagery shows tunnel portals remain backfilled, no heavy machinery has entered for reconstruction since late July 2025, and ventilation infrastructure is destroyed. Enrichment at Fordow is physically impossible while the shafts remain sealed.
Whether the MOP warheads actually penetrated the centrifuge cascade hall itself is contested. David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) assesses the weapons "likely entered directly into the buried enrichment hall" based on satellite crater analysis; the IAEA, using "expected" rather than "confirmed" in its September 2025 monitoring report, declines to match that claim because no inspector has physically accessed Fordow since June 2025. The Arms Control Association notes the strategic effect, an inoperable facility, is not disputed by any credible source; the physical question is.
Natanz and Esfahan were destroyed in the same Twelve-Day War: Israel's Operation Rising Lion on 13 June 2025 struck Natanz's surface Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant and cratered the underground cascade halls, while Esfahan's uranium metal conversion plant was destroyed in waves across 14 and 20-21 June. Midnight Hammer added two GBU-57s at Natanz (ISIS: "likely destroyed and knocked out of operation") and collapsed all four Esfahan tunnel entrances with Tomahawks. Esfahan's deeply buried storage, holding roughly 200 kg of 60%-enriched uranium, survived because even the MOP could not reach it; US strategy was access-denial, not destruction of the material itself.
Operation Roaring Lion / Epic Fury, the February 2026 campaign, did not retarget Fordow. Natanz took access-denial strikes on already-ruined entrances on 2-3 March and again on 21 March; the IAEA reported "no additional impact detected at FEP itself" because the underground halls had been out of service since June 2025. Iran's own foreign minister Abbas Araghchi conceded the point on 13 April, telling CBS that Iran cannot currently enrich uranium at any facility. The Majlis 221-0 suspension of IAEA cooperation on 11 April locks inspectors out of the residual questions (centrifuge hall breach, surface rebuild intent), but the first-order question, whether Fordow produces enriched uranium, was answered in June 2025.
