Israel hasn’t hit Iran’s secretive Fordo nuclear facility yet. Here’s why it might.

Iran has two sites of known underground nuclear enrichment, that of Israel attacked on the First day of his assault has Nathanzand another in Fordo. Both are south of Tehran in the center of Iran, but Fordo has long been the Iranian nuclear installation of most concerns for monitors and international experts.

Burial deeply in a mountain, Fordo is the place where many analysts think that Iran has concealed clandestine efforts to work towards a capacity of nuclear weapons. There was no Israeli shot reported on the installation of enrichment of the effort.

As soon as March, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that US intelligence agencies did not think that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, but that the soldiers of Israel said a few hours after launching its attack on Iran last week that American information was exceeded, saying that Iran was running towards a nuclear bomb “.

The Israeli defense forces spokesman, the General of Defense, the general, Effie Defrin, said on Friday that the country had information indicating that the Iranian regime “has established a secret program, within the framework of which Iran’s superior nuclear scientists secretly conducted the necessary experiences to build nuclear weapons.”

Addressing journalists early Tuesday morning, Trump seemed to have been influenced. Asked about the assessment that Gabbard delivered in March, he said: “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having them.”

Iranian leaders have always denied any interest in constituting a nuclear weapon, insisting that the program is for civil purposes. But if it is obscurity, as Israel insists it, and the Iranians are close to a capacity for nuclear weapons, more than a decade of analysis of Iran’s nuclear installations by experts from around the world suggests that Fordo would be at the heart of these efforts.

Why is Iran’s nuclear site such a concern?

Two experts told CBS News in 2012 – the last time Netanyahu sought to attack Iranian nuclear installations – that Fordo, buried nearly 300 feet under a mountain and protected by important air defenses, was the most likely location for a hypothetical “breakdown” program of nuclear weapons.

Fordo is “obviously for the coverage of nuclear weapons, to preserve centrifugal in the event of an attack” against other more vulnerable installations, Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert from the Iranian nuclear program in London International Institute of Strategic Studiestold CBS News in 2012.

Israel attacked the only other nuclear installation known to house major uranium enrichment installations in Iran last week, causing damage to Natanz.

But the progress made in Fordo even at this stage, before the nuclear agreement prohibited in the United States with Iran made United Nations inspectors in the country, and since Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from this agreement during his first time, causing an escalation of Iran’s efforts, he remained unlike.

The UN nuclear surveillance agency, the IAEA, said Iran not in accordance with its surveillance efforts for the first time in 20 years, just a few hours before Israel attacks it. The lack of understanding of Iran’s work in the establishment has long been a concern, but these concerns have increased in recent years, because the American withdrawal of the nuclear agreement has prompted Iran to reduce cooperation with international inspectors and to increase its enrichment.

At the end of 2023, Manuel Herrera, an expert in non-proliferation of weapons with two different European mines, said that Fordo remained “”One of the main concerns about Iran. “”

“Fordo has always been a major concern because of its location and because of its size,” said Herrera said during a discussion With his colleague Iranian expert William Alberque, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. We all knew from the start that Fordo was a site that was aimed at enriching uranium for arms, because of its location, due to its size, due to its technical capacity. And … that the Iranians have expanded this site and also expanding the stock of uranium enriched in this site, should be a concern for us, because, in fact, we do not have much transparency on what is happening there. “”

Herrera noted that: “Unlike Natanz who is too much, Fordo is underground – it is an installation that has in fact a tunnel structure.”

In addition to its well -fortified location and structure, Herrera said that Fordo “has always been supposed to be an enrichment factory for military purposes” due to the machinery of the site.

He noted that the Iranian regime had boasted in 2019 Installation of advanced “IR-6” advanced centrifuges in Fordo, capable of enriching uranium at higher purity levels much faster than most of its older equipment. At the beginning of 2023, the Iaea said He had found Uranium particles in Fordo enriched at almost 84% purity, which is incredibly close to 90% purity uranium which would be necessary for a nuclear weapon.

“This tells us that Iranians experience at least this type of enriched level of uranium,” said Herrera.