US weighs ‘Mother of All Bombs’ strike plan on Iran

Asked straight out about the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, President Trump didn’t deny it was on the table. “It’s not nuclear at all, this is just an extremely large bomb,” he told Newsmax. “I wouldn’t use nuclear, we don’t have to.”

That one line, said almost in passing, is where this story becomes public. But it caps weeks of quiet planning inside the Pentagon that only a handful of officials knew about, and it comes as pressure builds on Trump to find a way out of a war that has dragged on for more than six months. As we reported on 15 October in our first look at the MOAB option, military planners had already begun drawing up these strike packages.

How the plan came together

According to multiple US officials familiar with internal military discussions, Trump ordered the military months ago to build fresh strike packages against Iran. One source told CNN these plans cover “a lot of energy infrastructure” and include the possible use of the MOAB.

The same source said the plans used a telling phrase: that any such attack would come “prior to US retrograde in CENTCOM area of responsibility.” In plain terms, that suggests the administration could strike, declare the job done, and then pull American forces out of the region quickly.

A second source said the plans for hitting Iran’s nuclear sites, including the facility known as Pickaxe Mountain, specifically call for the MOAB to be used there too. Trump has threatened to strike Pickaxe Mountain repeatedly in recent months. The US and Israel believe Iran has stored parts of its nuclear programme there, and Trump keeps saying his goal is simple: Iran must never get a nuclear weapon.

Why the MOAB might not even work

Here’s the problem military planners keep running into. The MOAB is a GPS-guided bomb that can flatten an area the size of nine city blocks. But it’s a surface weapon. It isn’t built to punch deep underground, and Pickaxe Mountain is believed to sit behind layers of granite rock.

“The MOAB is a massive information operation type weapon that is great for huge area clearance but not much else,” one source familiar with the planning told CNN. “It is definitely not designed as a deep penetration warhead.”

That means if the bomb is used, it would cause heavy damage only at ground level. And because its blast radius is so wide, officials worry about civilian casualties if it’s dropped near energy infrastructure that sits close to populated areas.

Even so, Trump could choose to use it anyway, not to win the war outright, but to rattle Iran’s leadership at a moment when Tehran shows no sign of bending. One source described it as almost forced on him: “POTUS has unfortunately put himself in a situation where he is almost compelled to do something and, without the ammunition designed to penetrate that level… you have to look at psychological effects for which the MOAB is well-equipped.”

Many officials and outside analysts agree that the only way to truly defeat Iran would need ground troops, a step that could cost thousands of American lives. The Pentagon has such plans on file, as it does for most scenarios, but no one in the administration is currently pushing for it. Trump himself has shown little appetite for putting US boots on Iranian soil.

So why hasn’t this already happened?

Because Trump is caught between two bad options. The war is deeply unpopular with American voters heading into the midterms, as we explained when the Pentagon first began weighing new strikes before the vote. Simply withdrawing troops and walking away, though, would look like a defeat, something Trump’s own advisers say he’s reluctant to accept.

For weeks, top officials and military planners have searched for an