Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Writing
- Author’s title, BBC News World
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And Fordo’s day came.
Since Israel began its current military campaign against Iran with the justification that the Ayatolás regime was close to achieving an atomic bomb, the name of this Iranian nuclear installation has been occupying the headlines of the media worldwide.
The uranium enrichment plant is considered the crown jewel of the controversial nuclear program of the Persian nation, but, until now, it had been fought from the Israeli attacks.
Why hadn’t it been the objective of the bombs and missiles that Israel has been launching for ten days against its Iranian archiene? For its location.
Fordo was built several meters under land on mountain ranges near the city of Qom, about 96 kilometers south of the capital, Tehran, which made it almost unattainable for Israeli weapons, but not for those of the United States.
Satellite evidence
The attack that American aviation launched on Saturday night on Fordo and two other facilities (Natanz and Isfahán) has caused “devastating” damage to the nuclear program, according to the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
“We removed the ‘bomb’ of the hands (and they would use it if they could!),” President Donald Trump wrote on his social truth network, responding to the criticisms of a Republican congressman, who called his decision “unconstitutional”.
In the case of the underground plant, the high -resolution satellite images that the company Maxar Technologies has disseminated reveal that US bombs gave in the target.
In the graphs, taken this June 22, hours after the attacks authorized by Trump, up to six large craters are observed (probably the entry points of the US bombs), as well as gray dust and debris scattered down the slope of the mountain.
Boquets seem to be the confirmation that Washington used, for the first time on the battlefield, its antibúnker pump or massive ammunition penetrating (MOP) GBU-57A/B.
The GBU-57 weighs 13,600 kilograms and, according to military experts, it can cross approximately 18 meters of concrete or 61 meters of earth before exploiting.
General Dan Caine, Chief of the Ee.U. Joint Chiefs, confirmed during an informative session of the Pentagon on Sunday that 14 MOP bombs were among the “75 precision guided weapons” used in attacks against Iran.
In the images, however, there are no columns of smoke, fire or large debris. Because? “A great explosive effect will not be observed at the point of entry, since (this type of pumps) are not designed to detonate in access, but in the depths of the installation,” Verify Stu Ray, a senior analyst of images of McKenzie Intelligence Services, told BBC.
Another detail is that the six entrance tunnels to Fordo can no longer be distinguished in the images. This, according to the expert, could be due to the fact that they collapsed after the attacks or that were intentionally blocked by the Iranians in an attempt to “mitigate the damage of air bombing.”
Ray also assured that US airplanes launched at least three different ammunition in two impact points, and that the gray coloration of the soil seems to be concrete remains expelled by the explosions.
Damaged but not destroyed
However, the fact that Fordo is several meters underground also prevents verifying the magnitude of the damage he suffered in these attacks.
“It is evident that it was affected, but the degree of damage inside the uranium enrichment rooms cannot be determined with certainty,” said Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Organization (OIEA).
For their part, the Iranian authorities have recognized that the installation was damaged.
“We have suffered damage,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), who nevertheless made it clear that the nuclear program will continue.
“This is not the first time that the industry (nuclear) suffers damage,” he recalled.
From Tehran they minimized the coup, claiming that the material that Lodged Fordo was previously transferred to other locations.
“Iran did not suffer a great blow because the materials had already been removed,” said the political deputy director of the Iranian state broadcasting, Hassan Abedini.
Image source, Getty Images
This opinion is shared by Israeli intelligence, whose initial evaluations showed that US attacks did not destroy, but inflicted “serious damage” to Fordo, the newspaper revealed The New York Timeswhich cited two Israeli agents under the condition of anonymity.
Other Persian authorities such as President Masoud Peeshkian insisted that the country will not renounce their desire to achieve nuclear technology, although reiterating that with “civil and peaceful ends.”
The OIEA, meanwhile, has assured that it has not detected an increase in radiation levels after US attacks.
In 2023, the OIEA found that Fordo centrifugers could enrich uranium at 60%levels, above what is required for civil use. They would have come to do it at 83.7%, about 90% necessary to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
According to the Institute for War Studies (ISW), Fordo hid 2,000 centrifugers in two tunnels at 80 meters underground.
Image source, Getty Images
About the other two whites
The Maxar firm also revealed this Sunday images of the plants of Natanz and Isfahán, which had already been previously attacked by Israel.
On the first, located about 220 kilometers southeast of Tehran and has an underground section, the graphs show two huge craters.
On the other hand, in the already destroyed Isfahán the satellite photos show large black brands of burns, multiple collapsed buildings and rubble throughout the complex.
And although from Washington they say that their attacks did not leave victims, the Iranian red crescent says that eleven people were injured, but did not specify whether they were civil or military, BBC Monitoring reported.
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