Iran acquires 10-Tonne ‘Father of All Bombs’

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Iran has assembled a 10-tonne non-nuclear bomb, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force commander, said Saturday, dubbing the weapon “Father of All Bombs” in contrast to the US “Mother of All Bombs” large-yield bomb.

“[Iran’s] Defense Industries Organization, as commissioned by the IRGC Aerospace Force, has manufactured a bomb weighing around 10 tonnes, which can be airdropped from Ilyushin aircraft,” Hajizadeh told IRIB broadcaster, adding that the weapon had massive destructive power.

The IRGC commander made the statement commenting on his previous remarks mentioning that IRGC had the “Father of All Bombs” compatible with to Washington’s GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) highly destructive bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb developed by the United States and widely referred to as “Mother of All Bombs.”

In April, the US military dropped the 22,000-pound MOAB bomb in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province targeting a tunnel complex which, according to the US Central Command, was used by the Islamic State terrorist group’s (IS, outlawed in Russia) local affiliate. The devastating weapon had not been used in combat before the Nangarhar operation, where it killed 92 IS terrorists.