These strategic bombers are capable of carrying both nuclear weapons and massive 12-ton "bunker buster" bombs that America developed specifically to target Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

Trump has significantly escalated his threats in recent days, promising that if a new nuclear agreement isn't reached, Iran will experience bombings "like it has never seen before". Tehran responded to the letter Trump sent to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by refusing direct negotiations with the U.S. as long as sanctions remain in place, but expressed willingness for indirect talks through a third-party mediator. According to a report yesterday on Sky News Arabic, Oman will serve as that mediator.

Trump himself declared last night that he prefers direct talks: "I think it goes faster, and you understand the other side much better than using intermediaries". Without explaining his statement, he claimed he "knows" that Iran does want direct negotiations, despite its public declarations to the contrary.

Against this backdrop, The Wall Street Journal reported at noon that the Trump administration intends to pressure Iran into direct talks. A senior American official told the newspaper that Washington wants to avoid indirect negotiations through "intermediaries on different floors of the same hotel passing messages back and forth". Such negotiations, the source said, could drag on for months or even years.

In the background, Iran continues to enrich uranium to 60% purity, very close to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons. There are also concerns that Iran is secretly working on shortening the path to developing other components of an operational nuclear warhead should it decide to break out toward a bomb. According to reports, Trump set a two-month deadline in his letter to Khamenei, but it remains unclear when exactly the countdown begins from his perspective: from the moment the letter was sent, or from the start of negotiations.

Either way, according to today's report, the U.S. goal in future negotiations with Iran is quite ambitious: The senior official told The Wall Street Journal that the objective is complete dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program. This contrasts with the 2015 agreement that Trump withdrew from three years later, which only imposed restrictions – albeit significant but many of them temporary rather than permanent – on Iran's ability to enrich uranium. Iran has been violating those restrictions since the U.S. withdrawal from the collapsed deal.

Trump's National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, has already declared that the administration's goal is to dismantle all aspects of Iran's nuclear program – uranium enrichment, accumulation of strategic ballistic missiles, and the ability to develop nuclear weapons. These are dramatic demands that will very likely make future negotiations extremely complicated, if not impossible. Iran consistently insists on its right to enrich uranium, ostensibly for civilian purposes, and also opposes any agreement that would limit its missile program. If Iran maintains these red lines, Trump may need to decide between carrying out his threats or "blinking" in the face of Tehran.

Meanwhile, he is backing up these threats with significant force reinforcement. The U.S. has not officially confirmed reports of the B-2 bombers being transferred to Diego Garcia, which is controlled by Britain and leased by the U.S., but has announced the strengthening of its air and naval forces in the region. Satellite images from Sunday initially showed four B-2 bombers parked at the island base, and in new images from Wednesday, their number had increased to six.

100 Meters Underground: Is the "Mother of All Bunker Busters" Still Effective?

This represents a significant show of force by the U.S., which has a total of only 19 bombers of this strategic type, developed in the 1990s at an astronomical cost of $1.1 billion per aircraft (with inflation since then, in today's terms that's about $2 billion per aircraft). The B-2 "Spirit" is a heavy bomber with stealth capabilities, and one of the goals in its development was to expand America's nuclear deterrence – since it can penetrate deep into enemy territory without being detected by radar systems.

The bombers, capable of carrying payloads of up to 18 tons and flying without refueling for distances up to 11,000 kilometers, are also used for conventional purposes, and the U.S. already employed them last year in strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. However, they are used sparingly, often only to send messages to rivals and enemies. Their transfer to an area near Iran constitutes a clear message, as they are currently the only aircraft in the U.S. military designed to carry the massive MOP bomb (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), also known by the code name GBU-57 – a 12.3-ton bomb developed with one central purpose: the ability to strike Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

The development of this bomb began in the first decade of the 2000s, and it is the most powerful non-nuclear "bunker buster," estimated by the U.S. Air Force to be capable of penetrating to depths of about 60 meters. It contains "only" about 2.4 tons of explosives, with most of the weight coming from its armored casing – allowing it to penetrate deep into the ground and "dig" through rocks, soil, and reinforced concrete. The GBU-57 is even heavier than the MOAB, the "Mother of All Bombs", which weighs about 10 tons, but since the latter is not designed to penetrate the ground, it contains a larger amount of explosives.

It has been previously reported that the GBU-57, which has never been used operationally, was developed specifically to enable strikes against the nuclear facility in Fordow, which according to reports was dug into a mountainside at a depth of about 80 to 90 meters underground. In 2022, it was revealed that Iran is building a new underground facility in Natanz at the same depth or possibly even deeper, between 80 to 100 meters. Reports about the excavation of that site raised questions about the effectiveness of using the bunker buster against it, but according to an AP report from about two years ago, American officials discussed dropping two such bombs in succession to ensure the destruction of the site.

The Expulsion from the Strategic Island, and Tehran's Threats: "We Can Reach Any Base"

The six bombers sent to Diego Garcia constitute one-third of the U.S. military's B-2 fleet, and military aviation expert Peter Layton estimated in a conversation with CNN that this essentially represents all the available bombers of this type. "I assume there are one or two at the home base for training and a few more standing by in case of need for nuclear deterrence. The others are in maintenance", said Layton, a former fighter pilot in the Australian Air Force. "Six is a significant number", he noted, emphasizing that if these bombers were intended solely for strikes against underground facilities of the Houthis – as part of the extensive operation the U.S. is currently conducting against Iran's proxies in Yemen – two or three would have sufficed. According to him, transferring six such bombers to the region already constitutes a "dramatic effort", with the message clearly directed at Iran itself.

Diego Garcia Island is located about 3,900 kilometers from Iran's southern shores, but the B-2 has a flight range of 11,000 kilometers, and satellite images distributed this week also showed KC-135 refueling aircraft at Diego Garcia. Tehran has clearly understood the message, and in recent days more and more threats against the base have been heard from Iran. According to the British Telegraph, there are now calls there for a preemptive strike against the base. "Discussions about the island have intensified since the Americans stationed bombers there. The response to Trump's threats should come in action – not words. Every base in the region is within range of our missiles", a senior Iranian official told the newspaper.

In another Telegraph report, an Iranian source promised that any American attack on his country would be met with an attack against the American-British base in Diego Garcia. "There will be no distinction between British forces or American forces if Iran is attacked, from any base in the region or within range of its missiles", the source said. Iranian media has also threatened to strike the island with ballistic missiles and Shahed 136-B suicide drones, which allegedly have a range of 4,000 kilometers, in response to any "hostile action" by the U.S.

Diego Garcia is indeed a tiny island – only 30 square kilometers – but it is the largest among the 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. Since the 1970s, the island has hosted a strategic air base that the U.S. leases from Britain, with the current agreement between them continuing at least until 2036. About 2,500 crew members live at the base, mostly Americans with only a minority of Britons, and it has strategic importance for U.S. operations in the region. It greatly assisted the U.S. in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it has been reported that the CIA also operated "black sites" there – the secret, unofficial facilities that the American intelligence agency established outside U.S. borders where terrorism suspects were tortured.

Right now, the fate of Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands is at the center of negotiations between the British government and the government of Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean that claims sovereignty over them. Mauritius, which was also a British colony in the past, has been demanding ownership of the islands that were separated from it by London in 1965. About 2,000 original inhabitants of the islands, descendants of slaves from Africa who were brought there by the French in the late 18th century to establish a coconut processing factory, were expelled by the British to allow the U.S. to establish the strategic base in Diego Garcia.

The UN Decision that Britain Violated, and Israeli Support

Britain did purchase the islands from Mauritius for a paltry sum of 3 million pounds, but Mauritius argues that it was effectively forced to give up sovereignty over them in exchange for receiving its independence in 1968. Many of the displaced people and their children now live in Mauritius, having waged a years-long struggle to return to the Chagos Islands. In 2019, Britain suffered a blow in its attempt to maintain control over them: the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the separation of the islands from Mauritius was illegal.

Following that decision, in the same year, 116 countries voted in favor of a non-binding resolution introduced in the UN General Assembly by African nations, stating that Britain should "withdraw its colonial administration" from the Chagos Islands within six months. Only six countries, including Britain, the U.S., and Israel, voted against. The Israeli delegation explained its vote by saying that the matter should be resolved between Britain and Mauritius. Britain did not meet the non-binding deadline set for returning control of the islands, but in recent years has been negotiating the terms of their return.

In October last year, the Labour government led by Keir Starmer announced an agreement in principle between the parties, under which Britain would transfer control of the islands to Mauritius and lease Diego Garcia for a period of at least 99 years – with the possibility of an extension for an additional 40 years – to allow the continued operation of the base on the island. Following Trump's victory in the U.S. elections, the signing of the agreement was delayed, and several senior officials in Washington criticized it harshly. Marco Rubio, then a senator and now Trump's Secretary of State, said last year that the emerging agreement posed a "serious threat" to U.S. national security.

However, Trump himself recently signaled that he would accept the agreement, and when he met with Starmer in February, he said: "They're talking about a very long-term lease, a very strong lease, for 140 years actually. That's a long time." This week, Starmer's spokesman updated that the agreement is in its final stages before being submitted for approval to the London Parliament.

But now criticism is being heard in the United Kingdom about the agreement, under which London will essentially have to pay to lease an island where a predominantly American base operates. Starmer's government has not disclosed how much it will pay under the agreement, but according to reports in the British press, the amount in question is 90 million pounds ($117 million) per year. "It's like transferring your house to someone else, and then paying to rent it", said Priti Patel of the Conservative Party, who serves as Foreign Secretary in the opposition's "shadow government". "This deal is simply madness".

The criticism intensified this week following the tariffs Trump imposed on all countries of the world, with Britain receiving the minimum rate of 10%. "We aren't using the island ourselves, so isn't it reasonable to demand that the rent be paid in full by those who are using it?". British commentator Paul Nuki wrote in a column. "And if the tenant continues to be the U.S., isn't it reasonable to demand that its president treat us fairly in trade, and completely remove the ridiculous tariffs on British goods?".