US military planners have drawn up strike options that could put the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known as the “mother of all bombs,” over Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites if President Donald Trump orders combat operations to resume, according to US officials familiar with the matter. The same officials, in the telling that reached ATN, New York, acknowledged unresolved doubts over whether the weapon would achieve what Washington wants. ATN could not independently verify the account, and neither the Pentagon nor the White House had confirmed the planning in the material reviewed.
The weapon carries a specific history. The US Air Force first used it in combat on April 13, 2017, against an Islamic State tunnel complex in Achin district, in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. The Pentagon described it then as containing 11 tons of explosives, and an Air Force spokesman called it the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat. Afghanistan’s defense ministry said the strike killed at least 36 militants. The bomb weighs roughly 21,700 pounds and was developed in 2002 and 2003, around the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
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Using it against Iran would mean pulling a once-used weapon into a war that has already run for months. The conflict began in February. A ceasefire took hold on April 8 after nearly 40 days of Israeli and American strikes, and Trump declared it over on July 8 after the US struck Iran and Iran fired at American sites in the Gulf, with Washington citing attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has kept up a functional blockade of that waterway, while the United States holds a counterblockade of Iranian ports.
Trump signaled on October 8 that major strikes were off the table for now. In a post on Truth Social, he said the United States would not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections and described “productive discussions” with Tehran. His post did not establish a ceasefire, and the naval blockade stays in force. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was reviewing the US response to its seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and would reply within days. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, for his part, called the negotiations “futile.”
The planning described in the accounts ATN gathered sits alongside a visible buildup. US officials have said the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a third aircraft carrier, could reach the region by the end of October with thousands of troops aboard its group. The USS Abraham Lincoln is set to return to San Diego after a record-long deployment tied to the war. One running tally puts the losses at at least 81 US aircraft worth up to $3.3 billion have been lost or damaged in the conflict.
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The picture on the water and in the Gulf has grown more violent in recent hours. Two further developments surfaced on Thursday: two ships sank near Hormuz after being hit by projectiles, and Yemen’s Houthis vowed further attacks on Saudi airports and oil facilities after a strike on Aramco’s headquarters. ATN has not independently confirmed either report.
Nuclear sites have been a target before. The United States struck Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 in an operation called Midnight Hammer, during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. A preliminary US Defense Intelligence Agency assessment from that period, parts of which became public, indicated that Iran had moved some of its enriched uranium away from the bombed sites and that the damage was more modest than Trump had claimed. Trump has said Tehran will not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and in July he reiterated that the aim was to scale back its nuclear program.
The officials who described the latest planning did not, in the accounts available, say the MOAB would be used, only that it appears among the options if Trump orders renewed operations. They said questions persist about how well it would serve US strategic objectives, a point that bears on a bomb whose designation describes an air-blast weapon rather than a penetrator. ATN found no on-record military explanation of how it would be matched to specific Iranian targets.
Washington has not announced any decision to resume strikes. Trump’s October 8 pledge covers only the period before the November 3 vote, and his administration has said the blockade of Iranian ports will remain in full force.
