October 625

My 327th post on The War

In this post I am going to do my best to bring everyone up to date on just what the IDF has been able to accomplish inside Iran since the launch of its operations in the early hours of the morning of Friday, June 13th. This is a moving target as so much is happening each day, but I will try my best to provide enough details to give you a good perspective. If you have not read my previous two posts you should in order to understand the context of this post.

Today’s Image - Iranian Uranium Enrichment & Processing Facilities

Today’s image is of the Fordow Uranium Enrichment facility built by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It, and the Natanz Uranium Enrichment complex, were hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency and world powers until 2009 when President Obama and the leaders of France and the UK announced its existence to the world. These two facilities along with the one located in Isfahan constitute the primary uranium Isotope separation facilities within Iran. There are many other supporting operations such as those that build the centrifuges, controllers, etc. but these three sites are the primary locations where Iran is enriching uranium towards the level of 90% needed to build a nuclear bomb. If you haven’t already, you will be hearing a lot about Fordow in the coming days. Fordow is located in Qom province of Iran about half way between the capital, Tehran, and the holy city of Qom. According to the JCPOA Agreement signed during the Obama Administration, the Islamic Republic of Iran agreed to repurpose the facility for research other than uranium isotope enrichment for 15 years. Of course, the Iranian Government never abided by this clause in this ridiculous agreement. In 1018 Israel released images of the Fordow complex showing how Iran expanded the facility. In 2019 Iran openly acknowledged that it had reached a level of 5% enrichment at Fordow. Just so you know, the level of uranium needed for a nuclear power station is 3.5%. So the only reason that Iran would need to enrich uranium to these levels is for the purpose of building a bomb. In 2021 Iran had reached an enrichment level of 20% and in March 2023 announced that it reached a level of 83.7%. All this while Iran had been expanding the capabilities of uranium enrichment at Fordow to include more than 1,400 centrifuges, the mechanical fixture which is the most common method for enriching Uranium.

Perhaps it is time to explain how conventional uranium enrichment is done… Remember, I am a PhD Chemist from UC-Berkeley. Uranium occurs naturally and is mined from ores such as alaskite, granite, pegmatite and monzonites. The main sources are located in Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger and Russia. There are also deposits in Iran. Large jets of water are injected through the ore with an oxidizing agent. The uranium then dissolves into solution, from where it is dried into a form of uranium oxide, often called yellow cake. The naturally occurring isotope is uranium 238. But it is uranium 235 that is necessary to create the fission chain reaction necessary for an atomic bomb, like that used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The actual enrichment process requires that uranium be in gaseous form, with is uranium hexaflouride UF6. The uranium oxide is exposed to heat and fluorine gas in a reducing atmosphere which enables the uranium to emerge as the needed UF6. Then to separate naturally occurring uranium into UF6 containing uranium 235, the gas is literally exposed to a mechanically spinning centrifuge where the heavier, unwanted isotope remains at the center in a more concentrated form. One has to take this “lighter” UF6 through many stages and many centrifuges until it emerges in concentrated form at the end. This is why hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to attain enriched uranium.

The Fordow Uranium Enrichment plant is built into a mountain with its main enrichment facility located 90 meters (~270 feet) underground, underneath a concrete barrier more than 10 meters (~30 feet) thick. As shown in the image above, the facility is surrounded by a security perimeter with guard towers. Inside there are barracks that can house a company of troops that guard the facility. Due to the incredible Mossad operation in January 2018 operating inside Iran, Israel has more than 100,000 pages of secret Iranian documents that detail all the Iranian plans for building a nuclear bomb. Within those documents are the blueprints of the design of the Fordow facility.

Until now, the IDF has only attacked and destroyed above ground facilities at Fordow. Publicly, analysts are insisting that the only way to destroy the deeply buried enrichment centrifuges at Fordow is through the use of a 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb that only the US Air Force possesses and must be dropped from an aircraft like the B-2 bomber, again only a US capability. However, several reports in the Israeli press suggest that the IDF has developed a plan of its own to take out the Fordow Enrichment Facilities. See here and here.

Early in the IDF operations against Iran, the Natanz Enrichment Facility was targeted for attack in several stages. Natanz is located further south than the Fordow facility, closer to Isfahan. You can search for it on Apple Maps or Google Maps. The Iranians renamed the Natanz Facility in 2012, to the Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Nuclear Facility in memory of Roshan who was assassinated that same year by Mossad. Roshan was the Deputy in charge of the Natanz facility. The Natanz Enrichment Facility was hidden from the world until Western Intelligence exposed its existence. In 2003 Iran came clean and informed the world of its existence. The complex was built to accommodate up to 50,000 centrifuges for enriching Uranium. The IAEA estimates that 14,000 are installed and at least 11,000 were operating up until the Israeli attack on Iran. The rooms holding the centrifuges occupy about 100,000 square meters or about 1,000,000 square feet. The rooms are located 22 meters underground and are protected by a 1.5 meter thick concrete wall built above the facility. At the moment the Natanz facility is the largest of the three Iranian Uranium Enrichment Plants. Israeli intelligence indicated that there was an operation in progress to shift the bulk of isotope separation to Fordow.

This image was taken from an article appearing in USA Today using a set of satellite images generated by Maxar Technologies. The article appeared yesterday, June 17. At this site you can read and view more details from the independent Institute for Science and International Security on the before and after attacks on the Natanz Facility. Here you can see a better picture of the before/after images of the Natanz Facility. If It shows the damage inflicted to the Natanz Enrichment Facility by IDF aerial missiles fired from Israeli fighter jets. The target of the attack included centrifuge assembly and testing facilities above ground, facilities that convert the Uranium extracted from ore to UF6 (Uranium Hexafluoride) which is the form of Uranium that undergoes the enrichment process and the underground centrifuge complex. There is some dispute in the public sphere whether the IDF had succeeded in destroying the underground centrifuges. Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Institute for Science and International Security verified the destruction of key facilities above ground but questioned whether or not the underground centrifuges were destroyed or disabled. But as reported in this Reuters article based on an x.com post on the IAEA feed that:

Based on continued analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery collected after Friday's attacks, the IAEA has identified additional elements that indicate direct impacts on the underground enrichment halls at Natanz.

While Fordow and Natanz are the main centers for uranium enrichment, the primary nuclear research center in Iran is located in Isfahan. The facilities there date back to the 1970s under the regime of the Shah when they were built by the French. It was expanded substantially later by the Chinese to include a small research reactor and a larger 10MW power reactor. While uranium enrichment does take place at the Isfahan Facility it has a much lower capacity compared to either Natanz or Fordow. But, much of the conversion of uranium into UF6 takes place there. At least it used to take place there until the IDF bombed the nuclear facility.

The image you see here was taken from a Jerusalem Post article. According to the IDF they succeeded in destroying the facilities that convert the uranium oxide to UF6 and related uranium processing.

There is one other nuclear facility in Iran that is not getting much attention, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant built with the assistance of Russia between 2011 to 2013 at a cost of $11B. It is a power generation plant and bombing it could cause enormous radiation leakage. Since the fuel for this plant comes from Russia and it’s output cannot be used to build a bomb, it is my guess that the IDF will refrain from attacking it.

At the time at which Israel started its attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure reliable estimates placed Iran’s enriched uranium at about 400kilograms (nearly 1,000 pounds) of 60% enrichment level. That is enough for

Related Enrichment Facilities

In addition to the uranium enrichment and processing facilities the IDF has been busy destroying many other factories and facilities related to the bomb making infrastructure. UF6 is highly reactive in the presence of water. It is an oxidant. So the mechanical pieces used in the centrifuges must be built from a special alloy of stainless steel. That includes the blades, ball bearings, housing cylinders, piping, etc. Machining such parts requires a large number of specialized machine shops. Creating the special stainless steel alloys requires sophisticated steel plants. UF6 will react with aluminum, copper, most metals and most plastics. The vacuum pumps used in the facility must use specialized parts and specialized oil lubricants. The building of these pumps and the synthesis of these specialized oils requires special factories. Monitoring and controlling the centrifuges also uses specialized equipment. You may remember the famous Stuxnet Mossad operation that targeted the controllers of the uranium centrifuges back in June 2012. Together with the US’s NSA, Israel’s special cyber IDF unit created a software worm that penetrated programmable logic controllers causing them to operate out of control. At that time Iran was using PLCs it purchased from Siemens (sold illegally by Siemens) that ran a version of Microsoft Windows. The cyber worm was activated and caused the centrifuges to spin out of control and destroy themselves. Well, since then Iran had to develop its own controllers to avoid a repeat of that problem.

But, it takes more than just enriching uranium to create an atomic bomb. One must have a specialized explosive system that can trigger the chain reaction. One must have a specialized container that can hold the nuclear material. And one must have a way of delivering the assembled bomb to a country far away, i.e. specialized missile. If you want to see more details about this I recommend you watch the movie “Oppenheimer” produced in 2023 and directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project and the people/efforts behind the creation of the world’s first atomic bomb. Iran’s ballistic missiles are not reliable enough in their current state to reliably deliver and detonate a nuclear bomb to Israel, Europe or the USA. But, they are working on improving this daily.

Overall, the IDF identified more than 200 unique sites across Iran that provide support for its nuclear weapons program in one form or another. It using drones, launched from some unidentified location (Israel is too far to reliably send drones with warheads to Iran.) to systematically take out each and every facility in Iran that can be used to support their nuclear program. In some cases the facility has dual use purposes.

While it is really hard to say, I have seen estimates for the financial investment that Iran made into it nuclear bomb program ranging between $100B to $150B . With the attacks launched by Israel in the past week, it would seem that much of it has now been squandered.

What Effect Will this Have on the Long Term?

Before moving on to describing the other sites Israel has been targeting I probably need to address the question…. “If successful, for how long will this operation push back Iran’s efforts to secure a nuclear bomb and deliver it?” The reality is that I do not have an answer to that question as it depends on too many variables that are unknown at this time.

We do not know how this will end yet. I think that most people expect a negotiated agreement between the US and Iran to result from this. I have seen reports from military analysts I respect in the Hebrew Press writing that Iran might sign a deal that blocks its nuclear program in its entirety while waiting for President Trump to leave office before re-starting their program again. No one, with a head on their shoulders, thinks that the Islamic State of Iran will not try to rebuild their nuclear program. Perhaps regime change might ensue ( not likely, in my assessment). It took Iran more than 25 years and some $100-$150B to get its nuclear program to where it is. Maybe it would take 5-10 years and only $50-$100B to rebuild it.

But ultimately the alternative to Israel not taking the action it did, would be to have Iran with a nuclear bomb within a month or two… which is a lot worse.

Initial IDF Attack on Iran

In the early hours of the onset of the IDF attack on Iran this past Friday morning it became evident that in addition to the fighter jet squadrons penetrating their air space that there was a fully operational Israeli base of drones operating from inside Iran. As documented here this covert Mossad operation was years in the making. The Mossad had established this base, smuggled the needed assembly materials into Iran and disguised the warehouse launch facility, hiding it from the IRGC and Iranian Army, right under their noses. It is clear that the targets were carefully picked over years of analysis and prioritized in a well designed plan of operation. As noted here, the Mossad Base in Iran had other sophisticated firing capabilities. There were commando teams in Iran which placed beaconing systems near all the Surface to Air Missile SAM sites, making it easy and quick to find for the drones and fighter jets. And they configured automated RPGs and similar small missile bearing launchers inside automobiles so they could be parked near targets and fired remotely.

Together with the IAF fighter jets, which have to be refueled while in the air, these drones initially targeted the military hierarchy and nuclear researchers. These human assets, if not assassinated in the initial attack, would have quickly dispersed and secured safe cover in underground bunkers. So they had to be first on the attack list.

Then, the IAF focussed on all the anti-aircraft batteries dispersed across the country. The Russian built S-300 Surface to Air Missiles SAMs that Iran had are from the 1990s. The IDF has trained against them in many drills and had no problems maneuvering around them. Nonetheless, they would be effective against the IDF drones. So they were next on the priority list. The IDF had removed most of them in October, 2024, but it destroyed any that remained last Friday morning. It is possible that some anti-aircraft defense systems remain in Iran. In fact, today it was announced that Iran managed to down its first Israeli drone last night using a SAM.

So let me repeat, this is the first IDF aerial weapon that has been successfully hit by Iranian forces since the start of the war last Friday morning. You may have seen reports coming from the IRGC that they hit 1-3 Israeli F-35s over the skies of Iran. It is all typical Iranian lying and boasting. This drone is the first occasion that an IDF asset was struck by Iranian forces.

Iranian Ballistic Missiles

After the human assets and the anti-aircraft missile systems, the IDF started to identify and attack ballistic missiles, their launchers and storage facilities. At the launch of the IDF operations the assessment was that Iran possessed roughly 2,000 ballistic missiles. As I noted yesterday, these missiles travel at about Mach 12-16 (Mach 1 is the speed of sound - 343m/sec or 1125 feet/sec). They rely on solid propellant and oxidant. The propellant and oxidant can only be loaded shortly before launch. They can be launched from either mobile platforms hauled by semi-trailer trucks or fixed in position. They exit the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at greater than Mach 10 and re-enter while slowing to about Mach 5. Iran has, over time, produced a whole family of short-range, medium range and long range missiles. So far, they have not demonstrated the capability of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, ICBM. But it is only a matter of time. Their longest range missile, Shahab-5 has a range of about 4,300 meters. That is just about the distance from Iran to London or Paris. These missiles have no problem hitting Israel or Southern Europe. Their reliability is not anywhere near 100% with about 10-25% landing well short of their targets.

To produce the missile firing capability one needs the fuel, oxidant, mobile launching systems, the housing and guidance systems. The missiles are NOT guided despite what you might hear from the Iranian IRGC. Moreover, you may have heard that they are using hypersonic missiles. This is also a lie. So far none of the missiles fired at Israel have been hypersonic. If they had them working I am sure we would have been targeted with them.

The IAF has been targeting the mobile and fixed missile launchers in particular. Without launchers they can’t fire the missiles. Back in October, 2024 Iran launched 100 missiles in a single day. Only three crossed into Israel. The rest either landed in Iran or Iraq, or were neutralized on the way to Israel. Last night, there were two separate waves of missiles fired at Israel of only about 15 missiles each. So clearly the IAF is showing results from their efforts. Today the Home Front Command changed their policy and are now allowing groups of up to 30 people to congregate. This shows that the missile threat from Iran is slowly eroding. This article from the New York Post goes into more details.

So in the first day or two, the IAF and Mossad drones started targeting the missile launching systems. Each launcher can fire about 12 missiles at one time. As of Monday this week, after 3 days of missions, the IAF estimates that they have destroyed 120 missile launchers or about ⅓ of the estimated original arsenal. As of last night the IAF placed that number at 160 or about 40%. And today the number creeped up to 180 or 50%. So the evidence in the air that we are seeing with the missile barrages from Iran substantiates the reporting from the IAF. But it is not just absolute number of launchers. With the full freedom of the skies in western Iran afforded to the IAF, the Iranian army is trying to redeploy the missile launchers to central and eastern Iran.

After counting the 470 missiles fired by Iran so far and those destroyed by the IAF, it is now estimated that Iran still has a bit more than ½ of its original arsenal, or about 1,000 missiles. In addition to destroying the launchers and missiles, the IAF is pursuing the factories that fabricate the fuel, the facilities that import/store the precursors to the fuel as well as the factories that produce the missile housing and launchers. More than 200 of such targets have been struck to date.

…..running out of space again… will continue either tomorrow or Friday…