Midnight Hammer: Tactical Brilliance, Strategic Blind Spot?

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US-Israel Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites Will be Strategic Failures: Expert

By TRH News Desk

NEW DELHI, June 23, 2025 — While the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure drew praise for their military precision, leading non-proliferation expert Dr. Jeffrey Lewis delivered a scathing critique, warning that the operations — RISING LION and MIDNIGHT HAMMER — may ultimately amount to “strategic failures.”

Lewis, who is with the James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies, argues that despite their tactical brilliance, the strikes have failed to neutralize the core threat — Iran’s actual stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and its ability to produce more centrifuges.

“The 400 kilograms of 60% U-235 — enough for nine to ten atomic bombs if further enriched — were largely stored in underground tunnels near the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility,” Lewis said, citing satellite imagery and movement of trucks near the sites. “And yet, those tunnels weren’t targeted. No one even knows where the material is now,” he added.

Images captured by satellite operators like Planet Labs show activity at Fordow and Isfahan in the days leading up to the strikes — trucks and heavy equipment sealing tunnel entrances, possibly relocating sensitive material before the bombardment began. “Iran just isn’t a no-drive zone,” Lewis added in a thread on X, dismissing claims that the HEU stockpile is now neutralized.

The Pentagon claimed success, with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine confirming that Operation Midnight Hammer involved seven B-2 bombers, 14 GBU-57 bunker-busting bombs, and over 125 aircraft, targeting key enrichment plants at Fordow and Natanz.

But Lewis says these attacks have ignored critical elements of Iran’s nuclear capability:

A massive underground facility near Natanz — estimated at over 10,000 square meters — believed to house advanced centrifuge production and possibly clandestine enrichment activities, was not bombed.
A new enrichment site near Isfahan, which the IAEA was preparing to inspect, was also left untouched.

“Iran has retained the enriched uranium, the ability to build centrifuges, and at least one — possibly two — functioning underground enrichment sites,” Lewis said, noting the enduring risk of Iran pursuing a nuclear breakout.

According to his analysis, Iran could begin installing IR-6 centrifuges at a pace of 1.5 cascades per week, and within five months, it could potentially convert its stockpile into weapons-grade uranium.

“This is proof that even the most extraordinary air campaign in modern military history can’t do what diplomacy once did,” Lewis said, arguing that the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) had more effectively curtailed Iran’s program than these strikes have.

He criticized what he described as double standards: “We hold diplomacy to far higher standards than military action. People who complained about the JCPOA’s ‘sunset clauses’ are now cheering a bombing campaign that may delay Iran’s program by mere months.”

Lewis suggested that the real motive behind the strikes may lie not in nuclear non-proliferation, but in a broader push for regime change. “If these strikes leave Iran’s leadership intact and still capable of going nuclear, then it’s a strategic failure cloaked in the language of pre-emptive self-defence,” he stressed.

As the world grapples with the aftermath, Lewis’s warning casts a long shadow over what was otherwise touted as a bold and historic military achievement — raising uncomfortable questions about whether the bombs may have hit targets but missed the mark.

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