![]() ![]() Israel also is believed to have killed scientists involved in the program, struck facilities with bomb-carrying drones and launched other attacks. If diplomacy fails, sabotage attacks may resume.Īlready, Natanz has been targeted by the Stuxnet virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges. and its allies are left with fewer options to target the site. With such bombs potentially off the table, the U.S. It is not clear that such a one-two punch would damage a facility as deep as the one at Natanz. officials reportedly have discussed using two such bombs in succession to ensure a site is destroyed. to create the GBU-57 bomb, which can plow through at least 60 meters (200 feet) of earth before detonating, according to the American military. That facility sparked fears in the West that Iran was hardening its program from airstrikes. The new Natanz facility is likely to be even deeper underground than Iran’s Fordo facility, another enrichment site that was exposed in 2009 by U.S. It would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as like a typical bunker buster bomb,” said Steven De La Fuente, a research associate at the center who led the analysis of the tunnel work. “So the depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder for us. Additional cascades spinning would allow Iran to quickly enrich uranium under the mountain’s protection. Those tube-shaped centrifuges, arranged in large cascades of dozens of machines, rapidly spin uranium gas to enrich it. The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonprofit long focused on Iran’s nuclear program, suggested last year the tunnels could go even deeper.Įxperts say the size of the construction project indicates Iran likely would be able to use the underground facility to enrich uranium as well - not just to build centrifuges. The center’s analysis, which it provided exclusively to AP, is the first to estimate the tunnel system’s depth based on satellite imagery. Based on the size of the spoil piles and other satellite data, experts at the center told AP that Iran is likely building a facility at a depth of between 80 meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet). The scale of the work can be measured in large dirt mounds, two to the west and one to the east. Each is 6 meters (20 feet) wide and 8 meters (26 feet) tall. That is just a short step from reaching the 90% threshold of weapons-grade uranium.Īs of February, international inspectors estimated Iran’s stockpile was over 10 times what it was under the Obama-era deal, with enough enriched uranium to allow Tehran to make “several” nuclear bombs, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.Ī different set of images analyzed by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies reveals that four entrances have been dug into the mountainside, two to the east and another two to the west. Since the demise of the nuclear accord, Iran has said it is enriching uranium up to 60%, though inspectors recently discovered the country had produced uranium particles that were 83.7% pure. Trump argued the deal did not address Tehran’s ballistic missile program, nor its support of militias across the wider Middle East.īut what it did do was strictly limit Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 3.67% purity, powerful enough only to power civilian power stations, and keep its stockpile to just some 300 kilograms (660 pounds). The construction at the Natanz site comes five years after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear accord. This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows construction on a new underground facility at Iran's Natanz nuclear site near Natanz, Iran, on April 14, 2023.
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