Iran Just LOST Control of Hormuz… U.S. Just Did Something HUGE to FORCE OPEN It

Iran thought that it could have everything its own way in the Strait of Hormuz due to its fast boats and coastal missile launch sites. The US just proved the regime wrong. Earth-shaking 5,000-pound bunker-buster bombs have just been unleashed by the US all over the Strait of Hormuz coast. The Strait has been cracked open.

The US is clearing the way for merchant ships to sail once again. And it's done so by deploying a brand new bomb that will snatch control of the Strait from Iran forever. We'll dig into what makes this latest US bunker buster so special later in the video. First, there's what the US did. US Central Command or CENTCOM took to X on March 17th to explain the basics. Hours ago, US forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions

on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran's coastline near the Strait of Hormuz, Senknom said. Adding, the Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles at these sites posed a risk to international shipping in the Strait. So we have what happened and the reason why explained in a nutshell, but there's so much more to cover here, especially when it comes to the types of bombs

the US used and what comes next with the Strait of Hormuz. Taking out Iran's missile launch sites along the coast is huge. The regime has been using those sites to terrorize merchant vessels that attempt to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. The US goal here is to keep a vital checkpoint that has been choked off by Iran's regime as open as possible by taking out these missile sites.

As the Telegraph explains, Iran has been using several tactics to maintain its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Fast boats, which are essentially speed boats equipped with sea-skimming missiles and other weapons, have been darting in and out of the Strait to attack merchant shipping at every opportunity. However, it's the anti-ship missiles that the US just targeted with its bunker-busting bombs that present the biggest threat over the long term.

Fast boats can be targeted as long as the US maintains its aerial presence over the strait, as it claims it will be doing by unleashing its A-10 Warthog attack aircraft to tackle the boats. But Iran's anti-ship cruise missiles are far more dangerous. These missiles, which include the Ghadir and Qadar, are mounted on trucks, making them road mobile. And they are weapons that are much harder to take out in the air than fast boats are to destroy in the water.

Iran has missiles that can target boats almost anywhere in the strait. Their ranges vary from 12 miles to 186 miles, covering the entire waterway from the coast to the strait's entrances and exits. Iran even has the Abu Mahdi.

This powerful cruise missile can travel for up to 621 miles, giving Iran's regime a threat that extends far beyond the single waterway that is creating so many problems in the wake of the US launching Operation Epic Fury. And when you throw in the Hormuz 2 and Gulf anti-ship ballistic missiles that Iran has developed, which both have ranges of 186 miles and are designed to strike moving ships with the help of satellite navigation, you get a very clear threat that needs to be eradicated.

The US will destroy Iranian missile stockpiles wherever it finds them. But a far more effective approach is to take out the launchers that Iran has lined across the coast of the Strait of Hormuz, as even the best Iranian anti-ship and cruise missiles become useless when there's nothing left to fire. The US's problem is that Iran hides its launchers too. Often stored in tunnels buried underground or dug out into the mountainsides, these launchers

aren't targets that America's missiles and regular bombs can strike. They're hidden far too deep for that. The US needed another kind of weapon to take Iran's Strait of Hormuz missile sites offline, and it found that weapon in something that it's only recently developed, the GBU-72. These are the 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions that CENTCOM referred to, and they're part of an ever-growing arsenal of bombs that the US has been developing to destroy hardened and underground missile sites. The use of bunker busters against Iran during Operation Epic Fury is far from a new development.

America has already used its terrifying 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs, against the Taleghan-2 nuclear facility, and it's rattled Iran with bombardments of 2,000-pound bunker busters targeting missile launch sites and hardened facilities all over the country. But the use of the GBU-72 to take out launch sites on the Strait of Hormuz coast is different. Well, this is reportedly the first time that the US has ever used this particular bunker buster. At least that's according to Hal Kemper, who is a national security analyst and retired marine intelligence officer.

Speaking to Fox News, Kemper is asked whether the US has used the GB-72 before. �Not that I�m aware of,� he replies, adding, �This is the first time I think this particular one has been used.� He points out that the US has been spending several years developing these specific types of bunker-busting bombs, likely with a view to using them against Iran and other nations that have hardened underground facilities. The goal isn�t always to take out the facilities themselves with these types of bombs. Some are buried so far deep that not even the MOP and its 200 feet of penetration can reach them.

However, underground bunkers need entrances and exits. They need tunnels heading into them, and they have to be built from the surface down. Take out the tunnels and you deprive Iran of whatever is inside its bunkers. Along the coast of the Strait of Hormuz, the US has been doing just that to prevent Iran's anti-ship missile launchers from ever seeing the light of day again. And it's been doing it with a bomb that it's never unleashed before. Maybe.

While the aviationist agrees with Kemper that what the US just unleashed on Iran represents the first usage of the GBU-72 in history, the War Zone, or TWZ, says that there may be some grounds for dispute. It points to a May 2024 report by CBS News which claimed that the outlet had spoken to three US officials, who confirmed that the GBU-72 had been unleashed on Houthi compounds in Yemen in the wake of that group's targeting of shipping in the Red Sea. Reportedly, the bomb hit its

target and it's interesting to see some of the parallels here. The Houthis, like Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, were trying to halt shipping through their attacks on a key waterway. Adding an extra wrinkle is that the Houthis are also backed by Iran and often referred to as a proxy of Iran's regime. What this means, assuming the CBS report is correct, is that Iran has some experience with facing the GBU-72 before. It wasn't able to do anything about it in 2024, and almost two years later, it definitely

couldn't stop America's bunker buster from ruining its underground missile launch sites across the Strait of Hormuz. How could Iran do anything? The GBU-72 is an incredibly impressive weapon. We're going to tell you why, along with revealing how the US unleashed its new bunker buster and what all of this means for Iran's position in the Strait of Hormuz in a moment. But before we do, this is exactly the kind of thing that we cover on the military show. If this is the kind of insight you crave,

make sure you're subscribed to the channel, because we break it down like this every single week. Returning to the GBU-72, there is a reason why Israel has sought to acquire this new bunker buster from the United States. What we know about the weapon is that it was originally developed to replace America's GBU-28, which entered service in 1991, and is another 5,000-pound bunker buster, albeit one that at over 30 years old may not be as suitable for dealing with Iran's underground bunkers as it has been for dealing with other hardened targets in the past.

We know that the US Air Force unveiled the GBU-72 in 2021, when it announced that the bomb had been successfully released from an F-15E Strike Eagle in testing. That also gives you a clue about how the US deployed its bunker buster in the Strait of Hormuz, so stick with us to find out more. There have also been pictures, which emerged in 2024, of B-1 bombs carrying GBU-72s on external pylons, indicating that the US has at least two options for deploying these earth-shattering

bombs.

Incidentally, B-1s are currently in RAF Fairfield, ready to fly their next sorties at a moment's notice. Iran was rocked by GBU-72s once already. It may have to deal with more coming its way in the very near future. As for the bomb itself, TWZ says that it combines a BLU-138B penetrating warhead with a variant of the Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM kit that the US uses for its 2,000-pound bunker busters. That tail kit combines GPS and inertial navigation systems to enable the US to launch its bombs

at a target from standoff range, which in turn minimizes the threat that Iran's air defenses could pose to the airframe that fires the bomb. Not that those defenses would pose much of a threat. Iran has been reduced to trying to guard against America's aerial assaults with isolated pockets of air defenses after Operation Epic Fury and Israel's Operation Roaring Lion destroyed about 85% of Iran's air defense network, per Alma Research and Education Center.

Interestingly, TWZ adds that the GBU-72 warhead appears to combine AFX-757 explosives with PBXN-109. That's notable because this is the same combination used in the MOP that we mentioned earlier. So, it's looking like the US has found something that works extremely well here. Beyond that, we don't know much more about the GBU-72, which leads to speculation about its range and penetration capabilities. According to TWZ, the GBU-28 could penetrate 15 feet of reinforced concrete and around

150 feet of earth. If the GBU-72 is supposed to replace this aging bunker buster, it stands to reason that it can penetrate deeper into both materials, placing Iran's underground bunkers at risk. And remember, it's not the bunkers themselves that the US needs to hit. Taking out the tunnels that Iran uses to take its Strait of Hormuz missile launchers in and out of these bunkers is enough to make them functionally useless.

The US could have done something similar with the 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs we discussed earlier, but more of those bombs would be needed to cause an equivalent amount of damage, and the US may be saving those weapons for strikes deeper into the Iranian

mainland.

The US wanted to complete this strike quickly and hit Iran as hard as possible. Concrete can't stop the GBU-72, neither can soil, and all across the Strait of Hormuz coast and Iran has been learning that lesson over and over again. Do you remember the clue we told you about before? It wasn't exactly subtle, to deliver GBU-72s to the doorsteps of Iran's underground missile launch sites, the US may have used F-15Es or B-1 bombers.

RBC Ukraine has the details, noting that current estimates suggest that the US dropped multiple GBU-72s on Iranian targets during its latest bunker-busting strikes. The outlet speculates that the sheer size of this payload suggests that the B-1s that the US has based at RAF Fairford must have been the choice, as each is capable of carrying up to 12 GBU-72s. America's F-15Es, by contrast, can only carry one of these powerful bombs each, so

it makes sense that the B-1s would have been deployed both to deliver more firepower in one strike and to minimize the risk presented by Iran's limited air defenses by providing them with as few targets as possible. This isn't to say that the F-15Es weren't involved in the operation at all. They may well have been, perhaps zipping in and out to deliver initial attacks as the B-1s completed the 8,500 km or 5,281 mile trek to Iran, or to follow up once the main launch sites had already been devastated. But if RBC Ukraine is right and the US unleashed up to 48 of its GBU-72s on Iran's missile

sites, it had to be the B-1s delivering the majority of the firepower. Whatever airframes the US used, the one thing we know for certain is that the GBU-72 has been unleashed across the Strait of Hormuz. That leaves us to answer two more questions, why now and what comes next? We'll come back to the latter question toward the end of the video. As for why the US chose now to unleash the newest addition to its bunker-busting range, the New York Post covers the basics in its report on the American strike. It points out that Iran has been trying to blockade the Strait of Hormuz ever since Operation Epic Fury began, and has been pretty successful. Using a combination of mines, drones, fast boats,

and anti-ship missiles, Iran has stopped the vast majority of the 27% of global maritime energy that blows through this one waterway each year, which has led to the price of oil flying up to over $100 per barrel several times during the conflict. Iran believes that it can put pressure on the US to call off Operation Epic Fury via its actions in the Strait of Hormuz, which is one of the single most strategically important stretches of water in the world. As the New York Times pointed out in a March 21st piece, the Strait is so important that the US once dedicated ships to policing it, and did so for three quarters of a century.

Still, much of the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian waters, which in turn makes the waterway a massive bottleneck for the world's energy supply. Iran is taking advantage of that fact by using its missile strikes, along with its other attacks, to scare merchant vessels attempting to travel through the Strait. Australia's ABC News reports that at least 20 ships have been attacked in and around the Strait of Hormuz since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28. Ships Simply Aren't Sailing Those who sail come through at a trickle.

The New York Times says that an average of three or four vessels is risking the journey through the Strait per day right now. Before the war with Iran, that daily average was over 100. And the crazy thing is that for as vulnerable as the Strait of Hormuz clearly is, many thought Iran wouldn't go so far as to shut the waterway down as comprehensively as it has. Neil Crosby, who is the head of oil research at the energy marketing analysis firm Sparta,

says as much to the New York Times, stating, The classic line of everybody, including myself, up to this point, was always, it's too big to fail. It will never close. Western or Allied naval powers will never allow this to happen. But it has happened. And GBU-72s hurtling into anti-ship missile launch sites across the Strait of Hormuz is the big answer that the US has come up with for the problem that Iran has created. With that, we come back to the second question we posed, what happens next? More may well be coming,

and the US has warned Iran of as much itself. Admiral Brad Cooper, who is the commander of CENTCOM, says that the US remains zeroed in on dismantling Iran's threat to the flow of free commerce in the Strait of Hormuz. Our pilots across the board

are dynamically hunting threats as well, finding and eliminating targets in real time," Cooper says, adding, and we will not stop pursuing these targets. The odds are that the overwhelming amount of firepower that the US has deployed in Iran will also be gathering intelligence about other missile launch sites along the Strait of Hormuz that were missed during the first volley of strikes. B-1s are still at RAF Fairford, so there is every possibility that the US will pull a repeat of

what we've just seen in the waterway. US President Donald Trump also hinted at the same thing as he delivered a warning to Iran on March 22nd that its regime has 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, else the US will obliterate the domestic power plants that keep electricity flowing throughout the country. For its part, Iran doesn't seem to be backing down to these threats, at least not completely. The country's government speaker, Mohammed Bakar Khalibaf, has already taken to X to issue a response to Trump's threats, stating, Immediately after the power plants and infrastructure in our country are targeted,

the critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be destroyed in an irreversible manner and the price of oil will remain high for a long time. However, there are signs that the unrelenting pressure the US has put on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz is starting to have some sort of effect. On March 22nd, Reuters reported that Iran has said that it is opening up the strait

to all ships barring those that are enemy-linked. The move comes as Iran tries to seek a diplomatic solution to the mess that it's found itself in, though it's unclear what ships Iran will consider as being linked to the US. Of course, American ships attempting the Strait of Hormuz journey will fall into that category. But what about NATO-aligned merchant ships or vessels from countries that do business with the US? Will Iran still try to hit them? Or is this Iran's way of acquiescing to Trump's 48-hour deadline while the regime continues to try to puff out its collective chest by claiming that it isn't capitulating? The next few days of transit,

or lack thereof, through the Strait of Hormuz will be very revealing. As for Trump, beyond his deadline, he's still sort of calling for America's allies to help it police the Strait of Hormuz, while also claiming that the US doesn't need those allies. Well, we don't need too much help, and we don't need any help actually, Trump has declared, in almost the same breath as he used to claim that NATO has made a very big mistake by not aiding the US in policing the Strait of Hormuz.

Regardless, NATO may well be coming. Its Secretary General Mark Rutte has said that NATO allies are actively looking to find a way forward for the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Axios also reported on March 19th that seven US allies have claimed that they are willing to form a coalition to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz, though no concrete commitments have been made, and it's unclear whether such a mission would move forward while Operation Epic Fury is on go.

But for now, Iran has to deal with the aftermath of the US unleashing powerful bunker-busting bombs at its underground missile facilities that line the Strait of Hormuz. And it may have even more problems to deal with if it intends to use its drones to present a threat in the waterway. An unexpected helping hand is coming to the US and the Gulf states that Iran is threatening by way of Ukraine and its interceptor drones.

Find out more about that in our video and remember to subscribe to the Military Show if you want to see more of our videos covering the latest developments in Operation Epic

Fury. Fury.

And thank you for watching.