US airstrike on Iran: Satellite images reveal heavy damage to Fordow?
Commercial satellite imagery released on June 22 shows that the US strike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant severely damaged – and may have destroyed – the deeply buried facility and its uranium enrichment centrifuges, experts said, but there was no firm confirmation.
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“They penetrated it with these MOPs,” said David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), referring to the MOP bunker-buster bombs the US says it used. “I think the facility was probably completely destroyed,” he said.
However, Decker Eveleth, a researcher at CNA Group who specializes in satellite imagery, noted that it was impossible to determine the extent of the damage underground. The hall containing hundreds of centrifuges is “buried too deep for us to be able to assess the extent of the damage based on satellite imagery,” he said.
To protect against attack, Iran has buried much of its nuclear program in heavily fortified sites, including carved into the side of a mountain at Fordow.
Satellite imagery shows six craters where the penetrator bombs appear to have penetrated the mountain, and the surrounding ground appears to be disturbed and covered in dust.
The United States and Israel have said they intend to stop Tehran's nuclear program. But failing to completely destroy the facilities and equipment could mean Iran could easily restart a weapons program that U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say it stopped in 2003.
Some experts have also warned that Iran may have moved a stockpile of highly enriched, near-weapons-grade uranium out of Fordow before the strike, and they fear Iran may be hiding this uranium and other nuclear components in locations unknown to Israel, the United States and UN inspectors.
They pointed to satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showing “unusual activity” at Fordow on June 19 and 20, with a long line of vehicles waiting outside the facility’s entrance. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on June 22 that much of the highly enriched 60% uranium had been moved to an undisclosed location before the US strike.
“I don’t think you can be confident of doing anything other than setting back their nuclear program by perhaps a few years,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “There are almost certainly facilities that we don’t know about.”
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed similar concerns. “My biggest fear right now is that they’re taking this entire program underground, not physically underground, but out of sight,” he told NBC News. “Where we’re trying to stop it, there’s a chance this could actually fuel it.”
Reuters spoke to four experts who reviewed Maxar satellite imagery of Fordow, which showed six craters spaced evenly across two groups on the mountainside, where the centrifuge hall is believed to be located.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that seven B-2 bombers dropped 14 GBU-57/B MOP bombs, a 30,000-pound precision-guided bomb designed to penetrate up to 60 meters (200 feet) into hardened underground facilities like Fordow.
Maxar imagery and Caine's comments show the B-2s dropped an initial salvo of six MOPs on Fordow, followed by a "double whammy" of six more in the same locations, Mr. Eveleth said.
Operation Midnight Hammer also targeted Tehran's main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and struck Isfahan, home to the country's largest nuclear research center.
Analyst David Albright said in a post on X that satellite imagery from Airbus Defence and Space showed that US Tomahawk cruise missiles had caused severe damage to a uranium facility in Isfahan and an impact crater above underground enrichment halls at Natanz. He questioned the US use of cruise missiles in Isfahan, saying that such weapons could not penetrate a tunnel complex near the main nuclear research center that is believed to be deeper than Fordow.
He noted that Iran recently informed the IAEA that it plans to install a new uranium enrichment plant in Isfahan. “There are probably 2,000 to 3,000 additional centrifuges that are expected to be put into this new enrichment plant,” he said. “Where are they?”
Meanwhile, in the wake of the attacks, Iran’s parliament is threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). “The world will be left ‘blind’ about what Iran might be doing,” warned Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association advocacy group.
