Obliterated? Damaged? Inoperable? What’s known about Iran’s nuclear facilities : NPR

A satellite photo of Iran’s Fordo Fuel Enrichment Facility taken on June 24 shows that the debris (gray) of an American strike using several weapons in bunker. The Israeli Air Force has destroyed additional roads and surface installations in a later strike.

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After almost two weeks of strikes from the American and Israeli forces, there is no doubt that the main parts of the Iranian nuclear program were subjected to a blow. But how bad it was? A document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that damage to a site could have been minimal, while the CIA chief said that the Iran’s overall nuclear program had been “seriously damaged”. President Trump, for his part, insists that the program was destroyed.

“This is called obliteration,” Trump said at a press conference yesterday in The Hague. “No other soldier on earth could have done so, and now this incredible exercise of American force has paved the way for peace.”

Here are each of the four main nuclear sites in Iran and what we know in their current state.

Expenditure

Buried at the bottom of a mountain, the Fordo Fuel enrichment site was most strongly fortified from Iranian nuclear installations. The site, which is under nearly 300 feet of granite, contained thousands of centrifuges which were used to enrich uranium near the quality of weapons.

US planners worked for more than a decade in preparation for a strike on the site, General Dan Caine, the president of the joint staff chiefs, told journalists today in a press conference. Two officers from the Defense threat reduction agency were full of full time looking for site vulnerabilities, and sophisticated IT models were used to see how to damage it. “They literally dreamed of the target at night when they were sleeping,” said Caine.

With Fordo in mind, the Pentagon has developed the penetrator of massive ammunition, a bunker bomb of 30,000 pounds. B-2 Spirit Bombers transported the weapons to force and dropped them into the ventilation wells. They exploded in a carefully choreographed sequence, with the aim of perforating the establishment.

It was a perfectly executed strike, said Caine. But penetrating a deeply buried installation like Fordo is extremely difficult. The hard rock and irregularities in geology can prevent weapons from reaching target depths and can divert shock waves, explains Raymond Jeanloz, professor at the University of California in Berkeley who studied bunker-buses.

Caine ceased to say that he thought that the installation was “erased” as President Trump claimed. “We are not nominating our own duties, we let the intelligence community do this,” he said.

Apart from the Pentagon, others believe that Fordo has been considerably damaged by the strike. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that Fordo was “inoperable” following the strike. And speaking on French radio, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that he thought that the centrifuges of the site were “more operational”. The day after the American strike, Israel bombed the access roads to Fordo in order to delay any return to the establishment.

David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, says that he expects the damage to be “quite serious”, but he adds: “I think it can be difficult to discover what happened unless someone is entering.”

Natanz

Before the strikes, the main site of enrichment of Iran was in an installation in Natanz. The installation had been subjected to sabotage and subterfuge by Israel for many years even before these attacks, including a computer virus which was sinking centrifugal more than a decade.

Partly because it was such a target, Iran has moved Natanz’s centrifuges in an underground room in recent years.

Israel attacked the Natanz site on the first day of the war. It destroyed an enrichment installation on the surface known as the pilot fuel enrichment factory. Israeli warnings have also struck electricity and other support facilities for the underground part of the site. Israel also dropped bombs on the buried centrifuge room, although they did not seem to unravel the establishment.

On June 22, the United States followed a strike using two massive ammunition penetrators to strike the underground rooms of the centrifuge.

“This installation has not been so deeply buried and I expected that the underground enrichment rooms are also very seriously damaged,” said Jeffrey Lewis, professor at the Institute of International Studies in Middlebury in Monterey who has studied Iran’s nuclear installations for years.

But Lewis also says that near Natanz, Iran has dug a huge underground installation on the side of a mountain. This installation, whose goal remains uncertain, seems to be intact.

Isfahan

Isfahan was the main site of Iran where he prepared uranium for enrichment and converted it into metal after its end. Putting uranium in metallic form is a critical step towards the construction of nuclear weapons.

Israel struck the Isfahan site in the early hours of its offensive against Iran. It destroyed the installation used to convert uranium into metals, as well as several other buildings inside the complex. The United States has followed the Israeli strikes with a salvo of dozens of cruise missiles launched by submarine.

“The installations above the ground are completely destroyed,” explains Lewis. “Donald Trump could certainly use the word” erase “.”

But like Natanz, Isfahan had tunnels nearby. These tunnels, which they say, could have been used to store some of the highly enriched uranium stocks, have been affected, but they would be largely in tact.

Arrack

Most of the Iranian nuclear program was centered on uranium, but the nation had also built but never started a heavy water reactor which could potentially produce plutonium, another important material for nuclear weapons.

Israel announced that he had struck the Arak reactor on June 19, destroying his concrete dome and a neighboring laboratory. Although the reactor was not considered an active part of the Iranian nuclear program, its destruction means that Iran will probably never be able to finish it.

“The Arab reactor was not operational, and it’s now Really Not operational, “said Lewis.

The unknowns

Experts say that, despite these strikes, Iran can still have significant nuclear capacity. Before the attacks, the IAEA assessed that Iran had more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium which was close to the bomb. This material was under warranty, but now, said to be gross, the Iranians informed the agency that they had taken protective measures, probably moving the equipment to an unhappy place.

Uranium can be stored in containers the size of a barrel or diving reservoir, explains Corey Hinderstein, vice-president of studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “These are easily mobile, they are easily hidden, and for the moment, I don’t think we can be confident that we know where everything is.”

At yesterday’s press conference, President Trump said he didn’t think the Iranians had time to withdraw anything from the sites. “I think they didn’t have the chance to get out anything because we acted quickly,” he said.

But Albright says that uranium is stored in hard containers that could have survived the strike, especially in the tunnels of Isfahan. “If there were some in Isfahan, in the rubble, it can clearly be unearthed,” he said.

Lewis adds that he thinks that Iran has other unknown underground installations which could serve as backups for what has been destroyed. “I tend to think that there are more sites that we do not know because Iran has always covered its bets,” he said.

In the end, experts claim that the only way to stop the Iranian nuclear program for good is to achieve a kind of agreement.

“If you really want to have reasonable confidence in a solution over time,” explains Christopher Ford, a former deputy under security subsectary for non-proliferation in the first term of Trump “, you must have an agreement with a kind of cooperative verification and continuous monitoring.”