What is Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, and could US weapons destroy it? | Israel-Iran conflict News

Israel’s hit on Iran’s main uranium enrichment site at Natanz on Friday destroyed the above-ground part of the facility and is believed to have damaged its underground uranium enrichment capabilities.

Although Israel also fired missiles at Fordow, home to another facility where nuclear fuel can be purified, that base is believed to still be fully functional.

This week, speculation has mounted over whether the US would supply Israel with the weapons necessary to strike inside the Fordow plant, which is deep underground and much harder to access than Natanz.

So what is known about the Fordow plant, and can it be destroyed?

What is the Fordow nuclear facility?

Fordow was originally built as a military facility for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is located 30km (18.5 miles) northeast of the city of Qom in northwestern Iran and is reportedly hundreds of metres inside a mountain.

Iran disclosed its conversion to a nuclear site in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, on September 21, 2009, after learning that Western intelligence services already knew about it.

Days later, the United States, Britain and France confirmed publicly that they were indeed aware of a secret fuel enrichment plant at Fordow. Conclusive intelligence that Iran was trying to install 3,000 centrifuges at the site was gathered in early 2009. By September, Fordow’s conversion was nearing completion.

Fordow is the only Iranian facility at which IAEA inspectors have found particles of uranium purified to near weapons-grade purity. That happened during an unannounced inspection in 2023.

The site is designed to hold up to 2,976 spinning centrifuges, the IAEA said, a fraction of the capacity for the approximately 50,000 in Natanz, Iran’s main nuclear site, which Israel struck the day it began its air strikes on Iran.

Has Fordow been damaged in the recent Israeli strikes?

Iran did strike Fordow.

But on Monday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said: “No damage has been seen at the site of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant or at the Khondab heavy water reactor, which is under construction.”

What is known about nuclear development at Fordow?

After the presence of the Fordow site became public in 2009, the US and Iran began their first direct talks in 30 years.

“The goal for these negotiations is to reach a mutually agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful,” the IAEA said.

While Iran submitted design information on Fordow to the IAEA in October 2009, it refused to submit a timeline for its design, construction and original purposes, saying that information lay outside its reporting obligations under the safeguards agreement with the UN agency.

Two years later in September 2011, then-IAEA Director General Yakiya Amano revealed that Iran had “installed centrifuges in Fordow with the stated objective” of producing uranium enriched up to 20 percent.

By March 2012, Amano reported that monthly production of 20 percent-enriched uranium at Fordow had tripled as four cascades of centrifuges had started simultaneous operation for the first time.

Uranium enrichment is the process of increasing the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope in natural uranium, which normally contains only about 0.7 percent U-235. To build a nuclear weapon, uranium must be enriched to about 90 percent U-235. Once enriched to those levels, uranium is considered “weapons-grade”.

In 2015, Iran, China, Russia, the US, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal put strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions.

In 2015, Iran was believed to have 2,700 centrifuges installed at Fordow.

What did Iran agree to under the JCPOA?

As the JCPOA talks progressed, Iran stopped production at Fordow by January 2014 and didn’t conduct “any further advances” there, the IAEA reported for the rest of the year. Iran also diluted its enriched uranium stockpile to 5 percent purity.

The JCPOA banned enrichment at Fordow and allowed only peaceful development of nuclear technology in Iran for energy production in return for a complete lifting of sanctions.

Iran agreed to refrain from any uranium enrichment and research into uranium enrichment at Fordow for 15 years. It also agreed not to keep any nuclear material there but instead to “convert the Fordow facility into a nuclear, physics and technology centre”.

A little more than 1,000 of the facility’s centrifuges were allowed to remain there with the rest moving to Natanz – something the IAEA said was done by January 2017.

Are there concerns about clandestine nuclear development at Fordow?

Despite the JCPOA, concerns and speculation over the Fordow  facility continued.

In 2016, Iran placed a Russian S-300 air defence system above the facility, indicating that it feared a direct air strike there.

After US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran gradually slid free of its constraints too, even though European partners tried to salvage the agreement.

During the unannounced inspection in January 2023, the IAEA discovered that Iran had connected two sets of centrifuges at Fordow, allowing it to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity, in contravention of Tehran’s safeguards agreement with the UN agency.

“Iran implemented a significant change to the declared design information for the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) without informing the agency in advance. This was contrary to Iran’s obligations under its safeguards agreement,” Grossi said.

The IAEA also said it had found uranium particles at Fordow enriched to 83.7 percent purity – close to the 90 percent enrichment needed for weapons-grade uranium.

“At the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, we found particles of high enriched uranium with enrichment levels well beyond the enrichment level declared by Iran,” Grossi said on March 6, 2023.

Iran denied this. On June 3 this year, Iran told the IAEA it had “exhausted all its efforts to discover the origin of such particles in those locations. According to the extensive investigations and examinations, relevant Iranian security authorities have recently discovered further clues confirming that sabotage and/or malicious act have been involved in the contamination of those locations.”

Can Israel destroy the Fordow facility?

It is widely believed that Israel lacks the means to penetrate the facility unless it deploys a commando unit to go inside it and physically plant explosives – a risky operation.

The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is considered a much more difficult target than Natanz because it is located inside a mountain.

The US, however, has a bomb that could theoretically destroy Fordow. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator weighs 13,600kg (30,000lbs). If enough of these bombs are dropped from a B-2 bomber, they could possibly collapse Fordow’s underground bunkers. Trump on Wednesday left open the possibility that he might deploy these weapons.

“I’m not looking to fight,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “But if it’s a choice between fighting and having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do.”

In typically enigmatic fashion, he said: “I may do it. I may not do it.”