As Israel’s “Operation Rising Lion” continues to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear program, strategic attention is focusing on the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a heavily fortified and deeply buried facility near the holy Shi’ite city of Qom, an essential target for neutralization of Iran’s nuclear program.
While Israel has confirmed a series of heavily damaging strikes on Iran’s other key nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Arak, a mysterious explosion reported near Fordow had raised questions about whether the critical facility has also been targeted in some way, the site officially remains untouched.
On June 16, i24 News reported a mysterious blast in the vicinity of the Fordow plant, accompanied by a 2.5 magnitude earthquake, though the cause remains unknown. The facility’s importance to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions is clear.
In an interview with JNS on Saturday, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) and former head of the Analysis and Production Division of the Israel Defense Forces’ Directorate of Military Intelligence, explained the unique threat posed by the site.
“The Fordow site, which is a relatively small site containing only about 3,000 centrifuges compared to tens of thousands at Natanz, was built specifically to secretly and securely enrich uranium to a military grade of 90% and above,” Kuperwasser stated.
“Iran did not declare the facility as required and it was exposed in 2009, several years after its construction began, thanks to intelligence information,” he said. “There is no justification for establishing such a facility except in the context of a military nuclear program.”
Kupperwasser added, “Currently, the Iranians are enriching uranium there to a high enrichment level of 60% using advanced centrifuges. The destruction of the facility is an essential component in neutralizing Iran’s nuclear program.”
The challenge of striking such a hardened target has been a long-standing military problem. Two American sources confirmed to Reuters on Saturday that the U.S. was moving B-2 strategic bombers to Guam. These bombers are capable of carrying the massive, 13,600 kilogram GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, a weapon designed specifically to destroy deeply buried targets just like the Fordow nuclear facility.
Built deep inside a mountain, the facility is protected by many tens of meters of stone and reinforced concrete. The difficulty in targeting such a site has placed a unique American weapon at the center of strategic discussions between Washington and Jerusalem.
According to a June 17 report in The Wall Street Journal, the primary weapon capable of destroying Fordow is the GBU-57, which can reportedly penetrate around 60 meters of earth and some 20 feet of concrete before detonating.
The GBU-57 is a weapon that the U.S. has not provided to Israel and can reportedly only be delivered by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which Israel also does not possess.
However, Israel has likely developed its own tactical options for taking on Fordow if necessary.
As the world fixates on the status of Fordow, Israel has confirmed severe damage to several other pillars of Iran’s nuclear program. On June 19, the Israeli Air Force struck the nuclear reactor in the Arak area, specifically targeting the structure of the reactor’s core seal.
According to an Israeli official, the Arak reactor, under construction since 1997, had the potential to produce 8-10 kg of weapons-grade plutonium per year. As part of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, Iran was supposed to have filled the reactor’s core with concrete, but it failed to uphold this commitment, leaving the plutonium path to a bomb viable.
Simultaneously, Israel has systematically degraded Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities. According to a military source speaking on June 21, the IDF has conducted two separate waves of strikes on the Isfahan nuclear site during the war, which is a main facility for uranium conversion and where Iran planned to enrich uranium to a military grade level.
Recent Israeli strikes also targeted two centrifuge production sites in Isfahan, in addition to several other such sites hit in recent days. “At this point, I can say that we have dealt a severe blow to Iran’s centrifuge production capabilities,” the source said on Saturday.
On June 20, the Israeli Air Force struck Iran’s SPND headquarters, which oversees advanced weapons research, for a second time, as well as nuclear weaponization sites near Natanz.
The attacks on the nuclear program are part of a wider campaign that is also targeting Iran’s missile program and military command, in addition to eliminating Iran’s surface-to-air defense network.