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Since late February, the United States and Israel have carried out one of the most extensive strike campaigns against Iran in decades. The objective was sweeping. Dismantle Iran's military capability, [__] its missile forces, and bring its nuclear program to a halt. According to US General Dan Kaine, thousands of targets were hit, air defenses largely neutralized, missile infrastructure devastated, and crucially, he claims nearly 80% of Iran's nuclear facilities have been hit and hit hard. But how much of it holds up? While official figures paint a picture of overwhelming success, the reality on the ground is hard to verify.
By combining satellite imagery and on the ground footage, we examine specific straight sites in detail, looking at what was targeted, how it was hit, and what the damage actually tells us in this episode of Photo Evidence. If the goal was to seriously degrade Iran's nuclear capability, then two sites matter more than almost any others. Parchin and Natans. Parchin is one of the most sensitive military sites in Iran, long associated with suspected nuclear weapons research, particularly high explosive testing linked to warhead design. The specific target, Telan 2, was a heavily fortified structure. On March the 11th, it was targeted in a major strike. Here's the facility before the attack. The structure you're looking
at is a hardened installation. Layers of reinforced concrete covered with soil designed to resist aerial bombardment. At its center is what analysts believe to be a cylindrical high explosive test chamber. This chamber is thought to have been used beginning in 2003 for experiments involving a specific type of plastic explosive called PETN. PETN when made extremely pure can initiate the chain reaction inside a nuclear warhead that produces the eventual nuclear explosion. Now compare that to after the strike. Three large impact craters are visible on the roof. They're aligned in a straight line almost perfectly spaced. That level of alignment strongly suggests a precision strike aimed not
just at the structure but at a specific point beneath it at the test chamber itself. The shape and depth of these craters are particularly revealing. They're narrow and steep-sided with very limited surface blast effects around the points of impact. That indicates a delayed detonation where the munition stays intact long enough to burrow through the overlying soil and concrete roof before exploding. If this were a surface strike, we'd expect wider, shallower craters and far more visible scorching. Instead, what we see points to a subsurface blast consistent with bunker busting munitions. Based on that
damage profile, analysts have pointed to weapons in the class of the GBU57 massive ordinance penetrator, which are typically delivered by B2 bombers or alternative bunker busting systems believed to be in Israeli service. These bombs have been used by the US against Iran before. In 2024 during strikes against another important nuclear site, Fordo, notice the near identical damage patterns, three holes close together with sheer sides and narrow mouths. But it's important to be clear that the exact munitions used in the parton strike have not been publicly confirmed. Another satellite image released by Vantor shows the transparent overlay of the post strike image at top an earlier
image from last year during an earlier construction phase. The overlay shows that the bunker buster bombs landed precisely along the main suspected high explosive test chamber. The blast evidence suggests the bombs penetrated the reinforced concrete sarcophagus into the interior. The main explosions traveled outwards from the interior, knocking down sections of the defensive wall just outside the northern entrance. A smaller support building to the southeast of the main building appears partially destroyed, likely from the blast over pressure. Separately, the fire control and instrumentation building was fully destroyed. That matters because those systems are
essential for recording and analyzing explosive tests. So, this wasn't just a strike on a single building. It was a strike on the entire testing setup. What makes this even more significant is that the facility had already been destroyed once before in October 2024. So, what we're looking at is the rebuilt version, and it wasn't rebuilt lightly. Satellite imagery from early 2026 shows Iran reinforcing the structure with additional layers of concrete, essentially creating a hardened shell around the facility. Once that concrete hardened, large quantities of soil were moved on top. The surrounding hillside provided a ready supply of earth, allowing the facility to be gradually concealed and further protected. But
despite those efforts, the March 11th attack appears to have penetrated those defenses. The craters suggest the munitions punched through both the soil covering and the reinforced concrete beneath it, breaching the internal chambers. So, what does this tell us? It highlights the importance of the site itself. This site has long been associated with Iran's armored plan, a program focused on developing nuclear weapons capability in the early 2000s, including high explosive testing. Over time, the facility has been modified and rebuilt, suggesting continued sensitivity around whatever activities took place here. Despite those defenses, the March 11th strike appears to have
penetrated directly into the core of the structure, destroying not just the building, but the test chamber and its supporting systems. That matters because it suggests functional elimination, not just damage. So when assessing claims like those made by US General Dan Kaine, that 80% of Iran's nuclear facilities have been hit and hit hard. This is one case where the available evidence supports that argument. Parchin was rebuilt after being struck in 2024, then reinforced to resist exactly this kind of attack. And yet it was still taken out. But not every strike in this campaign was designed to destroy infrastructure outright.
Nitan's or more specifically the Shahed Armadi Rashan complex is one of the central components of Iran's nuclear program. We've looked at this site before. In our previous episode, we analyzed strikes earlier in March where entrance structures were hit and access points to the underground facility were flattened. That matters because Natans isn't just a surface site. At its core is a vast underground fuel enrichment plant housing thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium potentially to weapons grade. Much of that infrastructure is buried deep specifically to survive aerial attack. But that didn't stop further strikes. On March the 21st, it was targeted in a major strike by US and Israeli forces.
Satellite imagery captured by Airbus on March the 27th and analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War shows additional damage across the site. An on-site security checkpoint has been struck, the main entrance has been hit, and a northern access point has been destroyed, leaving a visible crater in the road. This is an important detail because even if the enrichment halls themselves are not directly hit, restricting access can effectively shut down operations. This kind of targeting is deliberate. Underground enrichment halls are extremely difficult to destroy directly, but they depend on a limited number of access points for personnel, equipment, and maintenance. If those are
blocked or cratered, the facility can become functionally inoperable, even if the centrifuges themselves remain intact. In other words, you don't need to destroy the facility to shut it down. Taken together, these strikes appear designed to limit access to the facility and constrain movement along its internal road network. Meanwhile, at the Esvahan tunnel complex, an underground nuclear storage and support site, highresolution satellite imagery as of April the 8th shows no visible signs of additional damage. More importantly, there is no clear evidence that Iran has attempted to retrieve the highlyenriched uranian believed to be stored there.
That creates a critical uncertainty because securing or removing that material would likely be a priority in any effort to limit Iran's nuclear capability. According to the IAEA director general, similar material may also be present at Natans, potentially within tunnel systems inside the pickaxe mountain perimeter, which means even after these strikes, some of the most sensitive material may remain both intact and out of reach. So, what can we actually say about the damage at Natans? From the imagery, the pattern is clear. Entrances hit, access roads created, checkpoints and support infrastructure damaged. What we don't see is direct evidence of destruction inside the underground enrichment halls and that's
the key limitation. Facilities like this hands are designed specifically to prevent this kind of assessment. The most critical components centrifuges enriched uranium stockpiles are buried deep underground beyond the reach of satellite verification. The same imagery that underpins most open- source assessments of how successful these strikes have been. So, while the strikes may well have caused internal damage, there's no visible confirmation of it. What is visible points to a different approach. Rather than attempting to collapse the facility outright, the strikes appear focused on denial of access, blocking entrances, disrupting movement, and degrading power systems.
That can be highly effective, but it's also reversible. clear the debris, restore the power, reopen access routes, and the facility can at least in theory resume operations. Which raises an important question. How would the US know the full extent of the damage? Some of that assessment may come from intelligence sources we can't see, human intelligence or signals intelligence, monitoring Iranian internal communications. But based on public imagery alone, the evidence suggests disruption, not destruction. When assessing claims that the majority of Iran's nuclear infrastructure has been hit, Natan sits in a more ambiguous category. It has clearly been degraded.
It may even be inoperable. But whether its core capability has been eliminated is something we simply cannot verify from the outside. One of the most significant claims made by US General Dan Kaine is that 80% of Iran's missile production facilities were hit. If that is accurate, it would imply not just damage to military infrastructure, but a systematic dismantling of Iran's wider weapons production base. We come back to parch military complex this time through the lens of weapons production. And recent satellite imagery suggests it has been hit at scale. Across the wider complex, open- source assessment of satellite imagery identifies more than 150 buildings as damaged or destroyed.
We don't know exactly what each of these buildings was responsible for, but the systematic nature of the destruction means that almost no part of the facility has remained undamaged. Sidebyside images from Sentinel satellites show how the bombing campaign progressed. This photo taken on March the 17th is low resolution and so it is hard to tell how much damage has been done to the facility at this point. However, it acts as an important reference point. When we compare it with this image taken almost a month later, the scale of the devastation becomes apparent. A cluster of distinct white roofed buildings at the center of the
image is significantly reduced in size. The left hand building is entirely gone and the right hand one is half destroyed. A cluster of smaller buildings to the south is also significantly reduced, suggesting it was heavily bombed. To the southwest along this winding road, another group of small white buildings almost entirely vanishes between one image and the next. In fact, when you start looking closely, there is almost nowhere in these two images that has escaped entirely unscathed. Zooming in on the two locations we just picked out gives us a better look at what's going on. Here's that group of white roofed buildings from the center of the previous image.
You can see the two distinct larger structures at the top and the smaller cluster of buildings to the south. The resolution still isn't great, so we can't see a lot of detail, but we don't need to. This is them on March the 12th, and this is them almost a month later on April the 6th. The comparison is stark. One of the larger buildings appears to have been bombed multiple times with multiple black marks visible on what's left of its roof. The other large building is partially obscured by what appears to be a pool of black smoke rising from the south, and the northernmost end of it seems to have partially collapsed. Only a handful of other structures remain standing. The destruction in this area of the facility
appears almost total. Whatever these buildings were responsible for doing is not being done anymore. Here's the second site at the end of that winding road. You can see it largely intact from this image taken on March the 17th. And then again in this image taken on April the 6th. It is near total devastation once again. The outlines of buildings are still visible on the ground. But as for the structures themselves, almost none are still standing. We think this area was a garrison for troops along with storage areas. So not directly related to the production of rocket fuel or assembling missiles. However, destroying the garrison means that whoever was stationed at the base can no
longer be here. And that means no work can be done. More detailed imagery from another site at Parchin to the north of the buildings we were just analyzing fills in a lot of the blanks we couldn't see on previous images. Here we can see a large warehouse alongside eight smaller buildings surrounded by what seems to be earth and BMS. These are defensive structures that are supposed to limit bomb damage. If a bomb strikes one building, these piles of dirt stop shrapnel hitting the nearby buildings. That speaks to the importance of this site. While we don't know what Iran was doing inside these buildings, whatever it was, it was worth taking time and effort to defend, which also means it is
worth bombing. At least one explosive already appears to have been dropped on this warehouse. Part of the roof is missing. There appears to be damage to another adjacent structure, and there seems to be rubble on the ground. That was in early March. Now, compare it to another image taken several days later. All eight of the smaller buildings have been hit. Many of them have visible holes in their roofs, and there is debris on the ground around each of them. Debris is also spread up the side of the earth and BMS, suggesting they did their job in stopping the blast damage from traveling. But they were powerless to stop America or Israel from simply bombing each building individually. So, does this prove that
America has destroyed 80% of Iran's missile production facilities, as General Kane claimed? Well, yes and no. This is obviously just one site in the missile production pipeline that features at least three other sites similar to this along with dozens of other smaller sites and overseas producers who make components for Iran's missiles. However, we've seen that Parchin was not just hit extensively. It was practically raised to the ground. Very few, if any, buildings at the site have escaped damage. If America has managed to achieve this level of destruction at Iran's other missile facilities, then the 80% claim seems more credible. This is South Sharazz, one of the most important missile sites
in Iran's arsenal. Unlike nuclear facilities, this site is part of Iran's operational missile deployment and storage network, a hardened underground network designed for missile storage, preparation, and rapid launch, and it has been heavily struck. Satellite imagery uploaded and assessed by one OSEN analyst on X shows substantial damage to the northern end of the base. Surface level support buildings have been hit. logistic structures, operational facilities, everything that feeds into the underground system. But more importantly, the tunnel entrances in this sector have been directly targeted. These had recently been upgraded compared to 2025 imagery. These are not incidental structures. They are primary access points into the underground missile complex. Now moving
into the central ravine, satellite imagery shows multiple precision impact points. If you rotate the imagery, it becomes clearer. At least one primary tunnel entrance has taken a direct hit. That entrance now appears partially, if not completely, collapsed. A secondary entrance slightly further south is still visible. There are no clear signs of a direct impact at that point, at least from the available imagery. That doesn't confirm it's intact, but it does suggest that not every access point was struck, which raises the possibility of selective targeting, focusing on specific entrances rather than uniformly destroying the entire complex. Further south, the pattern intensifies. This is where the heaviest concentration of
strikes is visible. Several tunnel entrances in this zone show clear signs of direct impact. These structures are highly likely to be collapsed or sealed, effectively isolating this section of the underground network. Now look at the high ground above the complex. There are additional impact points here. These were also visible in earlier Sentinel imagery. They could correspond to ventilation shafts or other support infrastructure linked to the underground system, but that cannot be confirmed from imagery alone. They may also simply be near miss impacts on the surrounding high ground. And there's another layer to this. Separate reporting by Bellingat places a different kind of munition in
this same area. In the village of Cathari, just a few kilometers from the base, analysts identified what appear to be US-made Blue 91B scatterable anti-tank mines. These are air delivered scatterable anti-tank landmines designed to destroy armored vehicles by attacking their underbelly with an explosively formed penetrator. They are small flat tunic-shaped canisters with a distinctive aerobistic adapter still attached in some cases. A component used to stabilize the mine when it is air dropped. Geollocated video shows at least two of these mines found in the area. They appear approximately 2 km from the entrance to South Shar's missile base. The aerobistic adapter is
a strong indicator of the gator system, a US air delivered scatterable mine dispenser. The blue 91B is an anti-tank landmine designed to disable vehicles rather than destroy buildings. It is part of the broader gator system which dispenses a mix of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines over a wide area from the air. Once deployed, the mines are scattered across terrain and clusters, effectively blocking movement through roads, open ground or approach routes. Importantly, this system is not widely exported and the US is the only known participant in the war with Iran assessed to operate it. Further north of Shiraz, another strike is visible. In addition to surface damage, smoke was
observed near communications infrastructure. More significantly, this area appears to sit above an underground Ministry of Intelligence facility. Further analysis indicates that deep penetration munitions may have struck an underground Ministry of Intelligence facility beneath the comm site. The site had previously been targeted on March the 30th. Historical imagery shows multiple bunker entrances that were later concealed beneath Ministry of Intelligence surface buildings, a likely reason for repeated bunker busting strikes in this area. That matters because this doesn't appear to be a strike on surface level infrastructure
alone. Instead, it points to a deliberate effort to target buried intelligence facilities likely used for secure communications, coordination, or data storage. The repeated targeting of this site combined with the use of deep penetration munitions strongly suggests a deliberate effort to reach buried intelligence infrastructure, not just disrupt surface communications. If accurate, that points to a campaign extending beyond missile forces and nuclear facilities into the core of Iran's internal command, control, and intelligence networks. And that matters because degrading those systems doesn't just damage physical assets. It disrupts how the entire military apparatus functions, how it communicates,
coordinates, and responds. So, how much of the stated success actually holds up? Across multiple sites, the evidence points to a campaign that has been both widened scale and in some cases highly precise. At Parchin, we see strong evidence of deep targeted strikes that likely eliminated a critical component of Iran's weapons development infrastructure. At Natans, the picture is more ambiguous. Access points and support systems have clearly been degraded, but the core underground capability remains difficult to assess and may still be intact. Across the wider part military complex, the level of destruction is extensive enough to plausibly support claims of major disruption to missile production, at
least at the site. And at Shiraz, both south and north, the strikes appear focused not just on weapon storage and launch capability, but on restricting access, isolating underground networks, and in the case of the northern site, potentially targeting buried intelligence infrastructure. In some cases, facilities have likely been eliminated outright. In others, they've been rendered inoperable, at least temporarily, by cutting off access, power, or coordination. But there are limits to what can be verified. The most sensitive elements of Iran's military and nuclear programs are buried deep underground and beyond the reach of satellite confirmation. That means some of the most significant claims,
particularly around the scale of damage to nuclear infrastructure, remain difficult to independently verify. So, while parts of General Kane's assessment are clearly supported by the available evidence, others sit in a gray area where disruption is visible but destruction is not. In a campaign like this, the difference between delaying a program and dismantling it entirely is the difference between a temporary setback and a lasting strategic shift. And that's what we'll continue to track.
