How Tom Cruise's 'Top Gun: Maverick' predicted Trump's Iran strike (2025)

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Donald Trump's unprecedented airstrikes deep within Iranian territory have opened a floodgate of comparisons to a Tom Cruise blockbuster.

The 2022 'Top Gun' sequel, 'Top Gun: Maverick,' trended on social media over the weekend for its similarities to the president's Operation Midnight Hammer.

Taking place decades after the original 1986 film, the second installment features Crusie's protagonist, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, returning to the armed forces to prepare a new class of Navy pilots for a mission far behind enemy lines.

The mission: destroy a massive underground uranium enrichment facility before the unnamed hostile nation can create a nuclear weapon.

And just like the ones Trump hit over the weekend, the labs were located deep underground in a mountainous region guarded by surface-to-air missiles and next- generation fighter jets.

Both missions were carried out by the latest high-tech stealth aircraft, including B-2 spirit stealth bombers and a number of 4th and 5th generation fighter jets.

Perhaps most odd of all - both operations involved laser-guided bombs targeting ventilation shafts to reach the subterranean facilities.

'This Iran bombing raid of the nuclear sites included dropping bunker busters into the facilities’ AIR VENTS,' journalist Raymond Arroyo posted on X. 'Did someone watch Top Gun Maverick during planning?!'

Film account Movies Merica opined on X: 'Hearing how the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities, including Fordow, went down reminds me of "Top Gun: Maverick."'

Operation Midnight Hammer took place from Friday to Sunday and involved over 125 U.S. military aircraft and 75 laser-guided bombs. A submarine was also employed in the attack, launching dozens of Tomahawk missiles.The most notorious U.S. target was a uranium enrichment site deep underneath a mountain in Fordow, roughly 80 miles south of Tehran. To strike this stronghold, which reportedly sits around 300 feet beneath the surface, the U.S. deployed seven B-2 stealth bombers.

The bombers took off heading east from Missouri with their transponders off along with another package of B-2s heading west with their transponders on.

This deception tactic using a 'decoy' would later prove of paramount importance, Pentagon officials have said.

Images of the blast sites show impacts near multiple ventilation shafts above Fordow, locations perfect for U.S. bombs to breach further into the facility below, analysts say.

'Hitting a ventilation shaft would make sense, because the hole for air already penetrates the thick rock, interrupting its integrity,' Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the New York Times.

Iranian officials have said that the bombs did not do 'irreversible damage' to Fordow.

Ali Shamkhani, head of the Iranian nuclear program and senior advisor to Supreme Leader Khamenei, said Sunday, 'Even if nuclear sites are destroyed, game isn’t over, enriched materials, indigenous knowledge, political will remain.'

Unlike the overwhelming and immediate success in the movie, whether the U.S. strikes were effectively able to completely destroy the Fordow lab remains unclear.

Top Gun: MaverickPoliticsIranDonald Trump

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