Strike plans drawn for Trump include the GBU-43/B against Iranian energy and nuclear targets — but US officials doubt the biggest bomb in the arsenal can end the seven-month war.
Published 15 October 2026 · 18:00 GMT
The bomb weighs as much as a city bus and has been dropped in combat exactly once in history. On Thursday, the "mother of all bombs" returned to the center of the American debate over the war with Iran — this time as the centerpiece of strike plans recently drawn up for President Trump.
On Thursday, CNN reported that the United States military has developed strike plans that could include the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb — the "mother of all bombs" — against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites, if President Trump orders renewed combat operations. The reporting rests on American officials familiar with the planning. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the CNN report.
The GBU-43/B is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal. It carries about 11 tons of high explosives — 18,700 pounds — and has not been used in combat since 2017, when an American aircraft dropped it on an ISIS cave-and-tunnel complex in Afghanistan. It is a surface-devastation weapon, built to level everything across a wide area above ground.
Eleven tons of explosives — and even Washington is not sure the bomb can finish the war.
What makes the report striking is not only the weapon but the doubt inside the building that would use it. American officials told CNN that questions remain over the bomb's effectiveness in achieving Washington's strategic objectives. A very large bomb does not automatically solve a very deep target.
One possible answer sits in a mountain. Reporting from the New York Post says a GBU-43/B could be aimed at Pickaxe Mountain, near the Natanz nuclear facility, which Mr. Trump has previously threatened to bomb. Experts describe the site as "large enough" to "hold a centrifuge enrichment plant" — though the same reporting stresses there is no indication of nuclear activity there.
The other answer sits in Iran's energy grid. A source told CNN that Mr. Trump has ordered the military to develop strike packages against Iranian targets that include "a lot of energy infrastructure" — refineries, storage depots and the systems that move oil. Energy is both Iran's revenue engine and its pressure point, and Iran knows that Washington knows it.
The timing, as one source described it, would come "prior to US retrograde in CENTCOM AOR" — the military's area of responsibility covering the Middle East. Read plainly, that is a sequence: strike, declare the job done, and pull American forces out. An exit strategy drawn with explosives.
The White House declined to confirm the plans. "President Trump keeps all options on the table to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon," an official said. It is the administration's standing line — and it keeps every option, including this one, officially open.
The war began in late February, and the American campaign against Iran is now about seven and a half months old. Months of bombing have not produced a settlement, and the fighting has recently lulled rather than ended — which is precisely when the largest bomb in the arsenal starts to look, to planners, like a way to break the stalemate. Earlier coverage on these pages tracked the US blockade pressure on Iran's oil exports since the spring.
The backdrop is darkening at sea. Near the Strait of Hormuz, an Antigua and Barbuda-flagged ship sank after being struck by a projectile on September 23, killing one crew member; the rest were evacuated. Separately, Singapore's maritime authority reported a Singapore-flagged container vessel that sank while transiting the strait, with all 21 crew evacuated safely. The waterway remains the war's most flammable corridor.
At a rally in Montana on Wednesday, Mr. Trump declared that Iran no longer has a navy, an air force or an army left, and dismissed the negotiations meant to end the war: "should have probably left their leaders because I don't know who the hell we're negotiating with." (The Hill reporting.) Victory declared from a podium, the biggest bomb loaded in reserve — a strange posture to hold at once.
Strategically, the MOAB talk does three things at once. It tells Tehran that the pause in fighting is not safety. It tells Israel and the Gulf states that Washington still has escalation room. And it tells the American public, where CNN's reporting notes the war is deeply unpopular, that the administration is hunting for a decisive end rather than an endless one.
Economically, the target list matters more than the bomb. Striking energy infrastructure in a war that has already left oil markets restricted and jittery would rattle prices further — every refinery on the target list is also a line on a global supply chart. A MOAB over a refinery is an oil-price headline written in advance.
History offers one precedent and one warning. The precedent is Afghanistan 2017: the MOAB worked exactly as designed against a cave-and-tunnel complex. The warning is that Iranian nuclear sites are not caves — they are purpose-built, deeply buried facilities, and American officials themselves now question whether the bomb can reach what Washington wants destroyed. The same weapon, two very different mountains.
Politically, the leak itself is the message. Strike plans drawn up for the president, described to CNN by multiple officials, surface in public precisely when the administration is debating how the war ends — or at least how it can be said to end. A plan that exists on paper can be denied, de-escalated or detonated. All three options remain on the table, in the White House's own words.
Probably as theatre with a fuse. Iran has spent seven months absorbing American and Israeli strikes, kept the status of its nuclear program deliberately ambiguous, and watched negotiations stall. A reported plan to drop the largest conventional bomb ever used would confirm Tehran's core narrative — that Washington's diplomacy is the prelude to escalation — while giving Iranian hardliners exactly the provocation they can use at home.
The report traveled fast beyond Washington. Al Jazeera, picking up the CNN account, framed the MOAB option as an escalation at a moment when the fighting has lulled, and quoted a Brussels-based military expert who said the bomb would not guarantee the destruction of Iran's deeply buried nuclear installations — reducing the strike, in his words, to "political theatre."
Markets have been here before. When talk around Hormuz moved earlier this autumn, oil rallied on the mere suggestion of escalation — our coverage of the Hormuz talks rally captured how thin the market's nerves already were. A MOAB headline lands on nerves that have no slack left.
The phrase "prior to US retrograde in CENTCOM AOR" deserves a translation. It means the strikes would precede a pullback of American forces from the region — an exit choreographed around a show of force. It is how a war that cannot be won cleanly gets an ending that can be announced loudly.
For now, Tehran has not publicly answered the CNN report. But the two sinkings near Hormuz are a reminder of how the war's maritime front answers pressure — and the negotiations Mr. Trump mocked in Montana remain the war's only exit ramp that does not involve explosives. American strike planning rarely gets this specific, this publicly, without a reason.
There is also the matter of what "renewed combat operations" would mean after a lull, not a peace. The plans are conditional — nothing has been ordered, and the bomb has not moved. But the weapon is now in the public conversation, the target set is named, and the sequence is on the record: strike, claim victory, withdraw. Wars have been ended on thinner scripts.
From Washington's side of the table, the MOAB plans look like coercive diplomacy at its most literal: the biggest conventional weapon in the inventory, named publicly, aimed at the two things Iran values most — its oil revenue and its nuclear program. The logic is that Tehran negotiates only under credible threat, and nothing is more credible than eleven tons of high explosives on standby.
The domestic half of the logic is just as visible. A war about seven and a half months old, described by CNN's own reporting as deeply unpopular at home, needs an ending — and an ending needs a story. "Strike, claim victory, withdraw" is that story: a final demonstration of force that lets a president leave the region without looking like he was driven out of it.
From Tehran's side, the report reads as confirmation rather than revelation: seven months of American and Israeli bombing have already taught Iran that every pause in Washington's war is a planning interval. The MOAB threat slots into a long pattern of maximum pressure, and Iranian strategists will price it the way they price everything else — as a reason to keep their program ambiguous and their options open.
The Pickaxe Mountain detail will also be read closely. Experts note there is no indication of nuclear activity at the site — which makes naming it as a target look less like counterproliferation and more like signaling. In the region's reading, the bomb is aimed as much at the negotiations as at the mountain.
For the rest of the world, the weapon matters less than the target list. Iranian energy infrastructure is not a local asset — it is a node in the global oil system, and every refinery named as a possible target is a potential price spike for importers from Delhi to Dakar. The Global South pays for Middle Eastern escalation in fuel prices and food prices, always.
The Hormuz sinkings sharpen the point. Two vessels down in the world's most important oil chokepoint, and now talk of the largest conventional bomb ever used — for countries that buy their energy through that strait, this is not a distant war. It is a tax, collected daily, on everything they import.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal. It carries about 11 tons of high explosives — 18,700 pounds — and is designed to devastate a wide area above ground. The US military has used it in combat only once: in 2017, against an ISIS cave-and-tunnel complex in Afghanistan.
According to CNN's reporting, President Trump ordered the military to prepare new strike packages against Iranian targets that include 'a lot of energy infrastructure' and possibly the MOAB. One source said the bomb could be used against Pickaxe Mountain near the Natanz nuclear facility. The reported sequence is strike, declare victory, and withdraw American forces from the region — an endgame for a war now about seven and a half months old.
That is the open question — and American officials are asking it themselves. Sources told CNN that doubts remain over whether the bomb could achieve Washington's strategic objectives. The MOAB is built for massive surface destruction, not deep penetration, and Iran's key nuclear facilities are buried far underground. Al Jazeera quoted a military expert who called the strike 'political theatre.'
It would mark a sharp escalation after about seven and a half months of war. One source described the scenario as strikes 'prior to US retrograde in CENTCOM AOR' — hitting Iranian energy and nuclear targets, then pulling American forces out of the Middle East. Expect oil prices to jump, the Strait of Hormuz to grow more dangerous — two ships have already sunk there — and Tehran to answer in ways Washington cannot fully predict.
