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 want 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 exhausting rock, and encased in strengthened concrete that places it past the damaging attain of any of Israel’s publicly recognized weapons, it’s also a logo 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 stated that Fordow had been attacked, the semi-official ISNA information company reported, citing 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 instructed the Safety Council on Friday.
Its underground centrifuge halls might have been rendered ineffective by intensive harm to Natanz’s electrical energy provides, in response to evaluation of open supply satellite tv for pc photographs by the Institute for Science and Worldwide Safety think-tank (ISIS).
“Fordow will probably be difficult with out the US. It’s closely fortified and deep underneath a mountain. I’m unsure how a lot harm we are able to do there,” stated Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran knowledgeable on the Institute for Nationwide Safety Research in Tel Aviv.
“Iran just 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 presumably the final goal, in Israel’s air marketing campaign.
In world phrases, Fordow just 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 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, nevertheless, 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 in search of 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 have been Tehran to take that path, the ISIS estimates Fordow may convert Iran’s total inventory of excessive enriched uranium — assessed to be 408kg by IAEA inspectors in Might — to provide in simply three weeks sufficient weapons grade uranium to make 9 nuclear weapons.
“Iran may 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 sort of assault that Israel launched this week.
Following public revelations a few 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. That even might embrace the US’s big bunker buster Large Ordnance Penetrator that may bore via 60m of concrete.
In-built 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 deal, often known as the Joint Complete Plan of Motion, between Iran and world powers together with the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany
In return for sanctions aid Iran agreed, amongst different measures, to transform the power 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 through 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 an alternative. These started to transform Iran’s inventory of low enriched uranium to 60 per cent purity, from which it’s potential to provide weapons grade uranium inside days.
Analysts consider that Fordow, if it’s not destroyed by Israeli assaults, may kind the centre of Iranian efforts to “get away”. The nation may 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 have been ever focused, though such a transfer may draw the US army into the Israeli marketing campaign.
Including to the dangers is that Fordow just isn’t the one ultra-secure facility that Iran can fall again on. Tehran has just lately been constructing a fair deeper and higher protected facility into Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, also referred to as Pickaxe mountain, just a few kilometres south of Natanz.
Whereas Fordow is believed to have two tunnel entrances, Pickaxe has at the least 4, making it more durable to seal off entrances by bombing. Its underground halls even have extra floorspace.
Some worry the power, which Iran has up to now barred the IAEA from inspecting, may 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,” stated the FDD’s Ben Taleblu.
Animation by Gaku Ito, graphic illustration by Ian Bott
