Knowledge cannot be bombed away: The Limits of bunker-busters and the risk to China’s peaceful energy collaboration with Iran

WHEN the United States launched airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan in June 2025, it marked the most aggressive targeting of Tehran’s atomic infrastructure since the US withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). President Donald Trump declared the sites “obliterated,” citing the deployment of Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs by B-2 stealth bombers, while submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles rained down on support facilities. The strategic intent was clear: to cripple Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

AI Brief

US bunker-buster bombs may damage Irans facilities, but cannot destroy its scientific knowledge or nuclear expertise.
The attack risks straining US-China relations, as China has invested in peaceful nuclear cooperation with Iran.
Strategic bombing has limits and may backfire by strengthening Irans resolve and pushing it closer to China and other global partners.

But beneath the military bravado lies a strategic miscalculation. While physical structures can be damaged, knowledge—scientific, technical, and institutional—cannot be bombed away. Worse, this move risks alienating China, a crucial global power that has invested heavily in peaceful energy collaboration with Iran.

The Technical Limits of the MOP

The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator is indeed the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal. It is designed to burrow through reinforced concrete and earth, using kinetic energy to destroy subterranean bunkers. But even this formidable weapon has its limits. Fordow, buried under nearly 80 meters of mountain rock and reinforced with multiple blast-proof layers, presents a challenge far beyond standard penetration tests.

Military analysts have long debated whether even multiple MOPs could destroy the heart of Fordow’s enrichment operations. Despite U.S. claims of success, independent verification remains impossible due to the depth, design, and redundancy of these facilities. Iran’s tunnel networks are not only hardened but also strategically dispersed—a legacy of decades of planning under sanctions and threat of attack.

Iran’s Resilience: Science Can’t Be Erased

While the strikes may delay centrifuge operations or damage above-ground infrastructure, they do not and cannot erase the core asset of Iran’s nuclear program: its people and its knowledge. Scientists, engineers, metallurgists, and code specialists are not located in one facility but distributed across institutions, many of which are linked to universities, state research centers, and even private industrial contractors.

This is not Iraq in the early 2000s or Syria in the midst of collapse. Iran’s nuclear program has matured into a national institution. Bombs can delay; they cannot defeat.

China's Role: Strategic Energy Partner, Not Silent Bystander

This is where the broader geopolitical fallout becomes more dangerous. China has long maintained peaceful nuclear cooperation with Iran, grounded in principles of non-interference and mutual development. This includes technical training, infrastructure development, and fuel-cycle management under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Chinese scientists and engineers have worked alongside their Iranian counterparts at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, particularly in phases involving maintenance, safety inspections, and upgrading reactor capacity. Furthermore, Chinese institutions—such as the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and Tsinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology—have provided non-military scientific exchange in line with the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty).

Beijing's approach is two-fold: secure long-term access to energy while promoting peaceful nuclear technology in the developing world. Iran has been a willing partner. It is no secret that China sees Iran as a key pillar in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially in the energy corridor linking Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, and western China.

Any military threat that damages civilian or dual-use infrastructure undercuts this long-term planning. And this time, the threat came not from a rogue actor, but from Washington.

Strategic Risk to US-China Relations

By bombing Iranian facilities—some of which have benefitted from Chinese civilian nuclear cooperation—the US not only violates the spirit of the NPT, but also risks being seen as undermining China's peaceful outreach. Beijing has remained vocally opposed to militarising the Iran issue. It has advocated for diplomatic solutions and repeatedly affirmed the importance of keeping the JCPOA framework alive.

This is not mere rhetoric. In May 2025, during the ASEAN-GCC-China Summit hosted in Kuala Lumpur, China championed a joint communiqué with Muslim countries in support of "peaceful energy independence and scientific sovereignty." Many Gulf States, as well as Malaysia and Indonesia, endorsed this line—further isolating Washington and Tel Aviv.

The strikes jeopardise more than Iranian infrastructure. They risk sabotaging a global vision of multipolar cooperation in the energy sector. If China’s scientists and engineers conclude that their work is being targeted indirectly by military strikes, Beijing will have every reason to deepen its strategic support for Iran—politically, economically, and even in defense diplomacy.

What the US Has Forgotten

More than two decades of US military interventions in the Middle East should have taught Washington a crucial lesson: decapitation strikes do not work when the enemy is adaptive and ideologically motivated. Iran has shown, time and again, that it can absorb setbacks and emerge stronger.

This time, the knowledge that underpins its nuclear program is even more widely disseminated, better protected, and deeply rooted in national pride. Scientific resilience, coupled with international partnerships—especially with China—has given Tehran options far beyond the immediate impact zone of any bomb.

The US may have showcased its technological superiority, but it has not advanced strategic stability. On the contrary, it has inflamed tensions, endangered global scientific collaboration, and possibly pushed Iran to accelerate its covert capabilities.

Conclusion: Strategic Bombing Has Strategic Limits

There is a dangerous fallacy embedded in the logic of preemptive strikes: that if you can destroy the site, you can destroy the will. But knowledge is not a building. It is not a centrifuge or an electrical circuit. It is carried in minds, stored in code, and backed by international networks of expertise.

America’s strikes may have temporarily slowed Iran’s nuclear timeline. But they have neither stopped the program nor undermined the scientific consensus behind it. More importantly, they have risked offending a superpower—China—that has worked steadily to ensure Iran’s right to civilian nuclear development.

In a world that is already dangerously polarized, the failure to recognise the limits of military power—especially in subterranean wars—may yet prove to be the undoing of diplomacy. China, Iran, and much of the Global South are watching. They see what the bombs cannot destroy: the enduring idea that scientific sovereignty matters more than shock and awe.

Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is Professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia and a Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.