It is the heart of the Iranian nuclear program. On Saturday, June 21, an Israeli military source said the army had hit “Ispahan’s nuclear site”, in the center of the country, more than a week after the beginning of the war between Iran and Israel. The Army had already announced strikes in this sector on the first day of the conflict on June 13, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEA) indicated on Thursday that the central chemical laboratory of the site, a uranium conversion plant, a fuel manufacturing plant for reactors and the uranium treatment treatment enriched in metals.
If the ISPAHAN Nuclear Research and Technology Center is so strategic, it is because it gathers no less than seven facilities that allow the chemical processes necessary to transform the uranium mineral into raw materials that can be enriched. Above all, this is the last place where the IEA inspectors saw the Iranian stock of 409 kilos of highly enriched uranium after stopping visits last week due to Israeli assaults.
Limited damage so far
A month ago, Tehran told diplomats to plan “special measures” to protect this stock in case of an Israeli attack, but the IEA is not aware of these measures and does not know if enriched uranium is still in Ispahan. However, the agency is precisely the main mission of identifying uranium stocks worldwide and ensuring that they are not accustomed to manufacture nuclear weapons. Therefore, the Iranian situation is problematic because the country’s uranium stocks can fill 16 small containers and, therefore, be easily transported from one place to another in the nuclear complex.
And this Iranian nuclear complex has dozens in which thousands of scientists and engineers work. While the OIEA reported damage to several facilities at the Ispahan site after the Israeli attacks, one of its former inspectors Robert Kelley describes them as “very weak” with Bloombergspecifying that they undoubtedly went to places of high concentration of key personnel. The same observation after attacks on Natanz’s enrichment power plant whose damaged electrical installations can be repaired in just a few months according to experts.
And for a good reason, Natanz’s underground enrichment rooms are protected by 40 meters of earth, reinforced and concrete steel.
An essential use of the American GBU-57 pump?
The site where American staff has riveted eyes is today that of Fordo, built on the side of a mountain at a depth of almost 100 meters. The Israeli army does not have heavy pumps and stealth aircraft B-2 to enter the site that is beyond the reach of its projectiles. The smallest ammunition could make it possible to cut electricity on the site and reach the access tunnels, but only the powerful American anti-buna pump, the famous GBU-57, can destroy the deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities.
This pump of more than 13 tons for 6.6 meters long is unique because it can sink very deeply into the rock and concrete. GBU-57 “was designed to penetrate up to 200 feet (61 meters) underground before exploiting,” says the US army. Unlike many missiles or pumps that detonate their load at the time of the impact, these anti-bunker ojes first sink into the ground to exploit only once the grounding is reached. American B-2 planes are also the only ones that can leave this bomb that can be transported by two.
Source: BFM TV
