Near a summit in the Zagros Mountains in central Iran, staff are building a nuclear facility so deep in the ground it probably won’t succeed in a U. S. last-chance weapon. The U. S. military operation is designed to destroy those sites, according to experts and satellites analyzed. imagery. by the Associated Press news agency.
Photos and videos from Planet Labs PBC show Iran has dug tunnels in the mountain near the Natanz nuclear site, which has suffered repeated sabotage attacks amid Tehran’s standoff with the West over its atomic program.
Now that the country generates uranium close to weapons-grade grades after the collapse of its nuclear deal with global powers, the facility complicates Western efforts to save Tehran from the possibility of dropping an atomic bomb, which Iran denies pursuing.
Monday comes amid an upsurge in Iranian-American relations. tensions and stagnation in international relations between the two countries.
The final touch of such a facility “would be a nightmare situation that threatens to trigger a new spiral of escalation,” warned Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
“Given Iran’s proximity to a bomb, it has very little room to push its program, jumping American and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the threat of conflict,” Davenport told the AP.
This month marked five years since former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal that saw Iran curtail its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions on its economy.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has continued to impose a strict sanctions regime against Iran and its oil and petrochemical industries. Meanwhile, Tehran is advancing its nuclear program.
Biden, who was Barack Obama’s vice president when the 2015 deal was signed, had promised to revive the pact, but rounds of indirect talks over the past two years failed to restore it.
Since the end of the nuclear deal, Iran has said it enriches uranium by up to 60 percent, compared with the 3. 67 percent limit seen in the deal. A few steps away from reaching the 90-cent threshold for weapons-grade uranium.
In February, foreign inspectors estimated that Iran’s stockpile is more than 10 times higher than it had under the Obama-era deal, with enough enriched uranium to allow Tehran to make “several” nuclear bombs, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ).
The United States and Israel, which is believed to have its own secret nuluce arsenal, have said they will not allow Iran to build a nutransparent weapon. “We believe that international relations are the most productive way to achieve this goal, but the president has also been transparent that we have not taken any features off the table,” the White House said in a statement to the AP.
Iran’s project to the United Nations, in reaction to questions from the Palestinian Authority about the construction, said that “Iran’s nonviolent nuclear activities are transparent and protected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “
Iran says the new structure will upgrade a surface centrifuge production center at Natanz that suffered an explosion and upgrade in July 2020. Tehran later called the attack “nuclear terrorism” and blamed Israel.
Tehran has not declared any other plans for the facility, it would have to claim the site from the IAEA if the government plans to introduce uranium. The Vienna-based IAEA did not respond to questions about the new underground facility.
The new allocation is being built next to Natanz, about 225 km (140 miles) south of Tehran. Natanz has been a source of fear for foreigners since their lifestyles became known two decades ago.
Protected by anti-aircraft batteries, fencing and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, the facility stretches for 2. 7 km2 (1 mile) on the country’s arid central plateau.
Satellite images taken in April via Planet Labs PBC and analyzed via AP show Iran excavating at Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, or “Peak Mountain,” which lies just beyond Natanz’s southern fence.
Another set of photographs analyzed through the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies that 4 entrances were excavated in the mountainside, two to the east and two to the west. Each is 6 m (20 ft) wide and 8 m (26 ft) high.
The extent of the paintings can be measured in giant mounds of earth, two to the west and one to the east. Based on the length of the excavation piles and other satellite data, experts in the medium told the AP that Iran is most likely building a facility at an intensity of between 80 m (260 ft) and one hundred m (328 ft). The analysis of the medium, which he provided exclusively to the AP, is the first to estimate the intensity of the tunnel formula based on satellite imagery.
“So the intensity of the installation is a fear because it would be much more complicated for us. It would be much more complicated to destroy traditional weapons, such as. . . a typical bunker raid,” said Steven De La Fuente, an associate scholar in the field who led studies of the tunnel works.
The new Natanz facility is likely to be even more underground than Iran’s Fordow facility, another enrichment site that was discovered in 2009 via the U. S. U. S. and others. The facility has raised fears in the West that Iran will toughen its program against airstrikes.
These underground services led to the U. S. The U. S. Army is preparing to create the GBU-57 bomb, which can plow at least two hundred feet (60 m) of soil before exploding, according to the U. S. military. U. S.
U. S. officials reportedly discussed the successive use of two such bombs to make sure a site was destroyed, according to AP. It’s not clear that such a blow would damage a facility as deep as Natanz’s.