Trump Puts 'Mother of All Bombs' on the Table Against Iran
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President Trump confirmed Thursday night on Newsmax that the GBU-43/B — the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, commonly known as the MOAB — is among the military options under consideration if conflict with Iran resumes. Speaking directly to what he called misleading coverage from CNN and CBS, Trump was emphatic that the 21,600-pound weapon is conventional, not nuclear. Both networks had cited Pentagon officials saying the Defense Department has drafted contingency strike plans targeting a site referred to as Pickaxe Mountain inside Iran.
The MOAB's relevance to the Iran standoff is specific: as a thermobaric bomb designed to collapse underground tunnel networks and reinforced bunkers, it is one of the few conventional weapons theoretically capable of penetrating hardened nuclear infrastructure such as the Fordow enrichment facility, which sits under roughly eighty meters of rock near Qom. Military analysts have long debated whether even the MOAB can destroy a facility at that depth, with some assessments suggesting multiple sequential strikes might collapse an entrance without reaching the centrifuge halls below.
The choice of Newsmax as the venue for the announcement carries its own signal. Rather than a formal press conference, Trump addressed the nuclear question directly to a conservative audience — an approach analysts read as managing the optics of escalation while preserving enough credibility to maintain leverage in any resumed negotiations. The phrase 'if conflict resumes' implies a current pause or ceasefire arrangement rather than a hypothetical scenario.
Any strike of that magnitude would not occur in isolation. A MOAB attack on Iranian soil would almost certainly trigger retaliation against U.S. assets in the region, against Israel, and potentially against Gulf state partners — reshaping the regional architecture within hours. The operational documents specifying Pickaxe Mountain as a target represent a meaningful distinction from theoretical war-gaming, signaling that planning has moved into an actionable phase.