Israel’s hit on Iran’s predominant uranium enrichment website at Natanz on Friday destroyed the above-ground a part of the ability and is believed to have broken its underground uranium enrichment capabilities.
Though Israel additionally fired missiles at Fordow, dwelling to a different facility the place nuclear gasoline could be purified, that base is believed to nonetheless be totally practical.
This week, hypothesis has mounted over whether or not the US would supply Israel with the weapons essential to strike contained in the Fordow plant, which is deep underground and far more durable to entry than Natanz.
So what is understood in regards to the Fordow plant, and might it’s destroyed?
What’s the Fordow nuclear facility?
Fordow was initially constructed as a army facility for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s positioned 30km (18.5 miles) northeast of town of Qom in northwestern Iran and is reportedly tons of of metres inside a mountain.
Iran disclosed its conversion to a nuclear website in a letter to the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company (IAEA), the worldwide nuclear watchdog, on September 21, 2009, after studying that Western intelligence companies already knew about it.
Days later, the USA, Britain and France confirmed publicly that they had been certainly conscious of a secret gasoline enrichment plant at Fordow. Conclusive intelligence that Iran was making an attempt to put in 3,000 centrifuges on the website was gathered in early 2009. By September, Fordow’s conversion was nearing completion.
Fordow is the one Iranian facility at which IAEA inspectors have discovered particles of uranium purified to close weapons-grade purity. That occurred throughout an unannounced inspection in 2023.
The positioning is designed to carry as much as 2,976 spinning centrifuges, the IAEA stated, a fraction of the capability for the roughly 50,000 in Natanz, Iran’s predominant nuclear website, which Israel struck the day it started its air strikes on Iran.

Has Fordow been broken within the current Israeli strikes?
Iran did strike Fordow.
However on Monday, IAEA Director Normal Rafael Grossi stated: “No injury has been seen on the website of the Fordow Gas Enrichment Plant or on the Khondab heavy water reactor, which is underneath development.”
What is understood about nuclear growth at Fordow?
After the presence of the Fordow website grew to become public in 2009, the US and Iran started their first direct talks in 30 years.
“The purpose for these negotiations is to achieve a mutually agreed long-term complete resolution that will guarantee Iran’s nuclear programme shall be completely peaceable,” the IAEA stated.
Whereas Iran submitted design info on Fordow to the IAEA in October 2009, it refused to submit a timeline for its design, development and authentic functions, saying that info lay exterior its reporting obligations underneath the safeguards settlement with the UN company.
Two years later in September 2011, then-IAEA Director Normal Yakiya Amano revealed that Iran had “put in centrifuges in Fordow with the said goal” of manufacturing uranium enriched as much as 20 %.
By March 2012, Amano reported that month-to-month manufacturing of 20 percent-enriched uranium at Fordow had tripled as 4 cascades of centrifuges had began simultaneous operation for the primary time.
Uranium enrichment is the method of accelerating the focus of the uranium-235 isotope in pure uranium, which usually comprises solely about 0.7 % U-235. To construct a nuclear weapon, uranium have to be enriched to about 90 % U-235. As soon as enriched to these ranges, uranium is taken into account “weapons-grade”.
In 2015, Iran, China, Russia, the US, France, Germany, the UK and the European Union signed the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA). The deal put strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in change for lifting sanctions.
In 2015, Iran was believed to have 2,700 centrifuges put in at Fordow.
What did Iran comply with underneath the JCPOA?
Because the JCPOA talks progressed, Iran stopped manufacturing at Fordow by January 2014 and didn’t conduct “any additional advances” there, the IAEA reported for the remainder of the 12 months. Iran additionally diluted its enriched uranium stockpile to five % purity.
The JCPOA banned enrichment at Fordow and allowed solely peaceable growth of nuclear expertise in Iran for power manufacturing in return for an entire lifting of sanctions.
Iran agreed to chorus from any uranium enrichment and analysis into uranium enrichment at Fordow for 15 years. It additionally agreed to not preserve any nuclear materials there however as a substitute to “convert the Fordow facility right into a nuclear, physics and expertise centre”.
A little bit greater than 1,000 of the ability’s centrifuges had been allowed to stay there with the remainder shifting to Natanz – one thing the IAEA stated was carried out by January 2017.

Are there considerations about clandestine nuclear growth at Fordow?
Regardless of the JCPOA, considerations and hypothesis over the Fordow facility continued.
In 2016, Iran positioned a Russian S-300 air defence system above the ability, indicating that it feared a direct air strike there.
After US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran step by step slid freed from its constraints too, although European companions tried to salvage the settlement.
Throughout the unannounced inspection in January 2023, the IAEA found that Iran had linked two units of centrifuges at Fordow, permitting it to complement uranium to 60 % purity, in contravention of Tehran’s safeguards settlement with the UN company.
“Iran carried out a big change to the declared design info for the Fordow Gas Enrichment Plant (FFEP) with out informing the company upfront. This was opposite to Iran’s obligations underneath its safeguards settlement,” Grossi stated.
The IAEA additionally stated it had found uranium particles at Fordow enriched to 83.7 % purity – near the 90 % enrichment wanted for weapons-grade uranium.
“On the Fordow Gas Enrichment Plant, we discovered particles of excessive enriched uranium with enrichment ranges properly past the enrichment degree declared by Iran,” Grossi stated on March 6, 2023.
Iran denied this. On June 3 this 12 months, Iran informed the IAEA it had “exhausted all its efforts to find the origin of such particles in these areas. In accordance with the in depth investigations and examinations, related Iranian safety authorities have lately found additional clues confirming that sabotage and/or malicious act have been concerned within the contamination of these areas.”
Can Israel destroy the Fordow facility?
It’s extensively believed that Israel lacks the means to penetrate the ability until it deploys a commando unit to go inside it and bodily plant explosives – a dangerous operation.
The Fordow Gas Enrichment Plant is taken into account a way more troublesome goal than Natanz as a result of it’s positioned inside a mountain.
The US, nevertheless, has a bomb that would theoretically destroy Fordow. The Large Ordnance Penetrator weighs 13,600kg (30,000lbs). If sufficient of those bombs are dropped from a B-2 bomber, they may probably collapse Fordow’s underground bunkers. Trump on Wednesday left open the likelihood that he would possibly deploy these weapons.
“I’m not trying to battle,” Trump informed reporters within the Oval Workplace. “But when it’s a alternative between preventing and having a nuclear weapon, you need to do what you need to do.”
In usually enigmatic trend, he stated: “I’ll do it. I’ll not do it.”
