Boeing is set to receive a contract worth up to $123 million to replace the 14 massive bunker-buster bombs expended during June’s US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday,citing a Pentagon budget document and three people familiar with the matter.
The weapon, known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), weighs 30,000 pounds (13,600 kg), measures six meters (20 feet) in length, and is considered the world’s largest precision-guided conventional bomb. It can penetrate up to 200 feet underground before detonating, according to the US Air Force.
The Pentagon disclosed in an August budget document that it had reallocated $123 million from operations and maintenance accounts to Air Force munitions procurement, saying the funds were needed to replace munitions used in “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the code name for the strikes.
The document described the operation as being conducted “in support of Israel.”
During the June raid, US B-2 bombers deployed 12 of the MOPs against the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, with President Donald Trump telling a gathering of military leaders outside Washington that the weapons achieved “total obliteration,” and that “every single one of them hit its target.”
On June 22, Trump ordered airstrikes on nuclear sites at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow two days before brokering a ceasefire to a 12-day war in June between Iran and Israel.
The bombs are manufactured with components from several facilities. The bomb bodies are forged at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma, where the Army has been expanding production capacity to triple monthly output.
Personnel there fill casings with explosives and assemble the warhead and fuse. Boeing supplies the tail kit, which provides navigation and guidance systems, and has integrated the bomb for use with the B-2 stealth bomber.
The Air Force has disclosed few details about the program but acknowledged in 2015 that it had contracted 20 units with Boeing.
The new replacement contract is separate from an agreement the service awarded in late August to Applied Research Associates Inc. and Boeing to design and prototype the next generation of the weapon.
The State Department’s Persian-language account on X said three women -- Somayeh Rashidi, Jamileh Azizi and Soudabeh Asadi -- died in recent days at Qarchak prison near Tehran after being denied medical care, adding their deaths followed that of Farzaneh Bijanpour in January.
It cited a statement by 45 women prisoners who condemned “inhumane treatment” of fellow inmates.
Washington also highlighted the case of Hossein Ronaghi, a well-known dissident jailed for criticizing the authorities, who is on hunger strike in protest at what it called “horrific prison conditions.”
The US said his health had sharply worsened due to denial of medication for chronic illness and demanded his immediate release.
Separately, it condemned what it described as the arbitrary detention and torture of Kurdish activist Pakshan Azizi, arrested with relatives in August 2023 and sentenced to death after what it called a sham trial.
“We call on the regime to halt her execution, free her and all political prisoners, and end its campaign of terror against its own people,” the statement said, adding more than 1,000 executions in Iran so far in 2025.
Iran submitted Cause of Death: Unknown by Ali Zarnegar after a selection process that excluded films by independent and dissident filmmakers.
Among those left out was the critics’ favorite It Was Just an Accident, secretly filmed by internationally acclaimed director Jafar Panahi, who is banned from filmmaking.
Panahi's drama was in turn submitted to the Oscars by France while fellow dissident filmmaker Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill will represent Canada.
Shahram Mokri’s Black Rabbit, White Rabbit has also been selected by Tajikistan.
Panahi’s film, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, was selected as France’s submission from a shortlist that also included Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life.
Oscars rules allow submissions in the category for productions "largely in the hands of citizens or residents of the submitting country."
The plethora of films by Iranian filmmakers has stoked some criticism, however, as LA Times columnist Glenn Whip wrote in an article titled, "The Oscars’ international feature category is broken. But there’s no easy fix".
"All this leads to a question raised annually: Isn’t there a better way to choose movies for the Oscars’ international feature category, one that sidesteps the politics of repressive regimes and produces a list of films that are the best the world has to offer?" he wrote.
The global presence of Iranian directors highlights both the richness of Iran’s cinema and the challenges artists face under domestic repression.
Earlier this month, an association of independent Iranian filmmakers called on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to overhaul how it accepts films from countries under authoritarian rule, warning that the current system legitimizes state-controlled cinema bodies.
In a letter to the Academy, the Iranian Independent Filmmakers Association (IIFMA) said the Farabi Cinema Foundation, which oversees Oscar submissions from Iran, enforces censorship and sidelines independent voices at home and abroad.
Many Iranian talents, facing censorship and restrictions at home, have fled abroad. Panahi remains in Iran under travel and work restrictions, but his French residence gives him the chance to participate in the Oscar submission process.
Mohammad Rasoulof, whose The Seed of the Sacred Fig was Germany's Oscars submission last year, was previously sentenced to prison and now lives and works in Germany.
While Iranian cinema has global reputation for its exploration of social themes, independent filmmakers operate under a system of strict censorship at home.
The government requires script approval and screening permits by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, punishing those who challenge political or social taboos with bans, imprisonment or exile.
