Iran’s mission to the United Nations has reiterated that the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear activities are “transparent” and under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
The mission made the remarks in response to an Associated Press inquiry about Iran’s reported construction of a nuclear facility so deep in the earth near a peak of the Zagros Mountains.
The US-based news agency cites analysis of satellite photos and videos from Planet Labs PBC, saying they show Iran has been digging tunnels in the mountain near the Natanz nuclear site, which has come under repeated sabotage attacks amid Tehran’s standoff with the West over its atomic program.
Tehran had earlier said that it intended to move its research and development machines underground, after an above-ground centrifuge manufacturing center at Natanz was struck by an explosion and fire in July 2020.
Iranian officials said at the time that the IAEA had been informed of the plan, but that there was no reason to allow inspections yet.
The agency’s director general later confirmed the plan, but said the construction would be a long-term process.
Iran would have to declare the site to the IAEA if it planned to introduce uranium into it.
The Vienna-based IAEA did not respond to AP’s questions about the new underground facility.
Beyond the Range
The news agency suggests that the new facility is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch US weapon designed to destroy such sites.
Earlier this month, the US military posted pictures of a powerful bomb designed to penetrate deep into the earth and destroy underground facilities, but later took the photos down, apparently because the photographs revealed sensitive details about the weapon’s composition and punch.
“So the depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder for us. It would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as like a typical bunker buster bomb,” said Steven De La Fuente, a research associate at the center who led the analysis of the tunnel work.
Already, Natanz has been targeted by the Stuxnet virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Israel also is believed to have killed scientists involved in the program, struck facilities with bomb-carrying drones and launched other attacks.
The top Israeli general raised the prospect of "action" against Iran on Tuesday even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser played down any immediate threat posed by the new underground nuclear facility.
"Iran has advanced with uranium enrichment further than ever before ... There are negative developments on the horizon that could bring about (military) action," Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel's armed forces, said in an international security forum.
He did not detail what those developments might be, nor what action might be taken and by whom.
"This of course limits the capacity to carry out an attack, relative to above-ground facilities, which is of course easier. But what can be said about this matter is that there is nowhere that cannot be reached," Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told the conference.
Hanegbi declined to threaten an explicit Israeli attack and even suggested the onus would be on the US by noting that it has massive bombs which are not in Israel's arsenal.
In any event, Hanegbi added, "this (underground facility near Natanz) is years away from being completed".
The construction at the Natanz site comes five years after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed tough sanctions on Tehran.
The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, strictly limited Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 3.67% purity and kept its stockpile to just some 300 kilograms.
In response to the US reimposition of sanctions, Tehran reduced its compliance and took countermeasures, including the enrichment of uranium up to 60%.
It maintains, however, that the program remains exclusively peaceful and in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s safeguards agreement.
Tehran has always denied any ambition to build a nuclear weapon, although asserting that it has the ability to make one if it chose to.
