The nuclear mountain that haunts Israel

To Israeli army planners, it’s akin to Mount Doom: a tightly guarded nuclear enrichment plant, buried half a kilometre beneath a mountain, which is ringed by air defences and symbolically located close to the traditional non secular metropolis of Qom.To Tehran, the Fordow facility symbolises its need to safeguard its nuclear programme, designed to outlive a full-frontal assault, with sufficient centrifuges and extremely enriched uranium intact to probably produce a nuclear weapon, or “get away”.Buried underneath arduous rock and encased in bolstered concrete that places it past the harmful attain of any of Israel’s publicly identified weapons, it is usually an emblem of Iran’s strategic nervousness.“Fordow is the be-all and end-all of Iran’s nuclear operation,” mentioned Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow on the Basis for Protection of Democracies, a US think-tank.On Saturday, President Donald Trump introduced that US planes had bombed Fordow, alongside different nuclear websites at Natanz and Isfahan, saying that the services had been “utterly and completely obliterated”.Iran confirmed the strikes, although the extent of the injury was but to be verified on Sunday morning.In world phrases, Fordow is just not a uniquely protected facility. Each main army energy with a nuclear programme has related underground army bunkers which have impressed numerous spy thrillers and conspiracy theories.Raven Rock within the US, the so-called “Underground Pentagon”, is constructed right into a Pennsylvania mountain. Russia’s secretive Mount Yamantau is believed to deal with a big nuclear weapons facility.The identical is true of the North Korean underground missile bases constructed into the mountains, whereas China’s Longpo naval base consists of an underground facility for nuclear submarines accessed by way of tunnels.Fordow, nonetheless, is the one main underground army base that has ever been instantly attacked — a precedent which exhibits the extraordinary dangers that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken by authorising the Israeli assaults this week.Iranian officers have lengthy denied searching for a bomb, and the newest menace evaluation issued by the US intelligence neighborhood this yr concluded that Iran had not restarted the nuclear weapons programme that it suspended underneath worldwide strain in 2003.However had been Tehran to take that path, the ISIS estimates Fordow might convert Iran’s complete inventory of excessive enriched uranium — assessed to be 408kg by IAEA inspectors in Might — to supply in simply three weeks sufficient weapons grade uranium to make 9 nuclear weapons. “Iran might produce its first amount of 25kg of [weapons-grade uranium] in Fordow in as little as two to 3 days,” ISIS has warned.The variations between Fordow and Natanz encapsulate a lot of Tehran’s nuclear historical past — in addition to the multilateral efforts taken to curb its enrichment efforts and thus pre-empt the form of assault that Israel launched this week.  Following public revelations a couple of secret facility, Natanz was ultimately declared by Iran to the UN in 2003. Whereas the sprawling industrial advanced comprises as many as 16,000 centrifuges, the design is for mass-scale uranium enrichment at decrease ranges. This, mixed with common UN inspection, made it extra appropriate for civilian-nuclear use. Natanz’s underground enrichment plant can also be buried solely about 20m underground.In contrast, what makes Fordow stand out is a geologic robustness that makes its centrifuge halls successfully impenetrable to air-delivered standard bombs. The US’s big bunker-buster bombs are thought-about the one weapons able to destroying Fordow. On Saturday, a number of US B-2 bomber plane — that are used to hold bunker-busters — travelled from the US to the Pacific.Inbuilt secret, Fordow’s existence was publicly unveiled in September 2009 throughout a second of excessive drama when US, British and French officers declassified intelligence exhibiting that Iran had covertly constructed a secret plant deep inside a mountain that was “inconsistent with a peaceable programme”.The discovering, which cemented what Britain’s then-prime minister Gordon Brown known as Iran’s “serial deception”, was so dramatic that it led to a uncommon Russian rebuke of Iran and a warning from China.  Iran stood agency on the time. “What we did was utterly authorized,” mentioned then president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, including: “What enterprise is it of yours to inform us what to do?”Even so, Fordow got here to lie on the centre of subsequent worldwide makes an attempt to curb Iran’s nuclear programme.It led to elevated UN sanctions and was on the coronary heart of a multilateral 2015 deal, often called the Joint Complete Plan of Motion, between Iran and world powers together with the US, UK, France, Russia, China and GermanyIn return for sanctions reduction Iran agreed, amongst different measures, to transform the ability right into a analysis centre, cap the variety of centrifuges there, halt uranium enrichment for 15 years, and permit for enhanced monitoring by worldwide inspectors.The US withdrew from JCPOA in 2018 throughout the first presidency of Donald Trump, and, since then, Iran has moved to complement extra uranium.Following a 2021 explosion at Natanz, which Iran blamed on Israel and that broken its enrichment capability, Tehran set the Fordow centrifuges whirring as a substitute. These started to transform Iran’s inventory of low-enriched uranium to 60 per cent purity, from which it’s doable to supply weapons-grade uranium inside days. RecommendedAnalysts imagine that Fordow, if it isn’t destroyed, might type the centre of Iranian efforts to “get away”. The nation might withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, halt co-operation with the IAEA, and shortly construct a nuclear bomb. Iran has beforehand threatened simply such a response if its nuclear services had been ever focused, though such a transfer might draw the US army into the Israeli marketing campaign. Including to the dangers is that Fordow is just not the one ultra-secure facility that Iran can fall again on. Tehran has not too long ago been constructing a fair deeper and better-protected facility into Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, often known as Pickaxe mountain, just a few kilometres south of Natanz. Whereas Fordow is believed to have two tunnel entrances, Pickaxe has at the very least 4, making it more durable to seal off entrances by bombing. Its underground halls even have extra floorspace. Some worry the ability, which Iran has to this point barred the IAEA from inspecting, might even be used to assemble a nuclear weapon whereas Iran was underneath assault. “A key query is whether or not Iran will, or possibly already has, secreted fissile materials into Pickaxe, or another unknown facility,” mentioned the FDD’s Ben Taleblu.Animation by Gaku Ito, graphic illustration by Ian Bott​Letter in response to this text: Will Israel’s ‘secret’ facility be subsequent within the highlight? / From Nicky Browne, Broadstairs, Kent, UK