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 spiritual 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 “escape”.
Buried underneath exhausting rock, and encased in bolstered concrete that places it past the harmful attain of any of Israel’s publicly recognized weapons, additionally it is an emblem of Iran’s strategic anxiousness.
“Fordow is the be-all and end-all of Iran’s nuclear operation,” stated Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow on the Basis for Protection of Democracies, a US think-tank.
Iran on Saturday confirmed that Fordow had been attacked, the semi-official ISNA information company reported, citing a spokesperson for the nation’s atomic vitality organisation, though the harm was restricted.
In contrast, Israel succeeded in destroying Iran’s bigger above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Natanz, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi advised the Safety Council on Friday.
Its underground centrifuge halls could have been rendered ineffective by in depth harm to Natanz’s electrical energy provides, in line with evaluation of open supply satellite tv for pc pictures by the Institute for Worldwide Science and Safety think-tank (ISIS).
“Fordow will likely be difficult with out the US. It’s closely fortified and deep underneath a mountain. I’m undecided how a lot harm we will do there,” stated Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran skilled on the Institute for Nationwide Safety Research in Tel Aviv.
“Iran isn’t but near level zero [the destruction of its nuclear programme] . . . They nonetheless have appreciable capabilities,” added Citrinowicz who stated that Fordow can be the toughest, and probably the final goal, in Israel’s air marketing campaign.
In international phrases, Fordow isn’t 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 assumed to accommodate 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 immediately attacked — a precedent which reveals 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 latest menace evaluation issued by the US intelligence neighborhood this 12 months 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 Could — 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 a few days,” ISIS has warned.
The variations between Fordow and Natanz encapsulates 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 type of assault that Israel launched this week.
Following public revelations a few secret facility, Natanz was finally declared by Iran to the UN in 2003. Whereas the sprawling industrial complicated accommodates 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. That even could embrace the US’s large bunker buster Huge Ordnance Penetrator that may bore by 60m of concrete.
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 displaying 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 referred to 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,” stated 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 take care of Iran — often called the Joint Complete Plan of Motion — and world powers together with the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.
In 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 in the course of 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.
Analysts consider that Fordow, if it’s not destroyed by Israeli assaults, might kind the centre of Iranian efforts to “escape”. The nation might withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, halt co-operation with the IAEA, and rapidly 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 isn’t the one ultra-secure facility that Iran can fall again on. Tehran has lately been constructing a fair deeper and higher protected facility into Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, also called Pickaxe mountain, a number of kilometres south of Natanz.
Whereas Fordow is assumed to have two tunnel entrances, Pickaxe has at the very least 4, making it tougher to seal off entrances by bombing. Its underground halls even have extra floorspace.
Some concern 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 perhaps already has, secreted fissile materials into Pickaxe, or another unknown facility,” stated the FDD’s Ben Taleblu stated.
Animation by Gaku Ito, graphic illustration by Ian Bott.
