Could the United States help Israel attack the Iranian Fordo nuclear site? No statement has yet been made to this effect, but “additional capacities” have been deployed to the US central command in the Middle East, according to the US Secretary for Defense on Monday, Pete Hegseth. Only American bombers, equipped with a “bunker breaking” bomb, the GBU-57, are capable of perhaps reaching the Fordo site. This uranium enrichment site, located between Tehran and Qom, south of the Iranian capital, is buried very deep under a mountain, a hundred meters underground.
A secret site revealed in 2009
On the satellite images available, we only see tunnel entrances, a main building and a road that surrounds the mountain. Its construction, in violation of UN resolutions, was revealed by Iran itself at AIEA September 21, 2009creating a crisis with the major powers of the Security Council which consider that the size and militarization of the site are not compatible with a civil nuclear project. “The size and configuration of this installation are not compatible with a peaceful program,” said US President Barack Obama at the time.
The Iranian site would have been built, according to estimates by the International Atomic Energy Energy Agency (AIEA), from 2002. After having presented it as a “rescue site” in a mountainous area, near a military base, in order to protect itself from an air attack, Iran indicated that it was a high -rate uranium enrichment factory, which can accommodate some 3,000 centrifuge. The first centrifuges were installed there during the summer of 2011 and entered into office in January 2012. Tehran decided to transfer its production of uranium enriched at 20 %, and the country now produces more than on the Natanz pilot site, according to the IAEA.
Gradual increase in the level of enrichment of uranium
In 2015, as part of the Iranian nuclear negotiated agreement (the “comprehensive joint plan of action”), Iran agreed to transform Fordo and suspend its enrichment of uranium for 15 years. But in 2018, US President Donald Trump decided to get out of the agreement, as a result of which Iran resumes his nuclear program.
Since then, the IAEA has noted a successive increase in the level of enrichment of uranium in Fordo, from 20 to 60 % noted in 2022. “Clearly increased production and the accumulation of uranium highly enriched by Iran, the only state not endowed with nuclear weapons to produce this type of nuclear equipment, are very worrying,” said AIEA in A report published this May 31. Beyond 80 %, it can be used to make nuclear weapons. It was also on this site that uranium particles enriched at 83.7 %were detected at the beginning of 2023. Iran had invoked “involuntary fluctuations” during the enrichment process.
According to an analysis From June 9 of the Think Tank ISIS (the Institute for International Science and Security) chaired by the physicist David Albright, former collaborator of the IAEA, “Iran can convert his current stock of uranium enriched at 60 % in 233 kg of WGU (military quality uranium, editor’s note) in three weeks at the Fordow fuel factory, 9 nuclear weapons, 25 kg of military quality uranium per weapon.
Iran ensures, however, that its program is civil. Tulsi Gabbard, the American intelligence director, said publicly before the Congress in March that the Iranians were not actively looking for a bomb. A report of its services says “that Iran does not manufacture nuclear weapons and that the Supreme Guide Khamenei did not re -authorize the nuclear weapons program he had suspended in 2003.”
The Fordo site not yet damaged by Israel
For the moment, “no damage has been noted”, according to the IAEA, on the Fordo uranium enrichment factory, although those of the sites of Natanz and Ispahan, in the center of Iran, have been affected by Israeli strikes in the Israeli attack of unprecedented magnitude launched on June 13 with the stated objective nuclear bomb.
According to the Financial TimesIran recently built an installation “even deeper and better protected in the Kūh-E Kolang Gaz Lā, also known as the Pickaxe mountain”, south of the Natanz nuclear site.