New satellite images show construction equipment at Fordow, one of Iran’s bombed-out nuclear sites. Efforts appear to be underway to repair damage and dig out new access paths.
In the images, which were captured on Friday by the US commercial satellite imaging company Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider, new activity was documented near the tunnel entrances, as well as the points where heavy US bombs struck Fordow over the weekend.
One image captured excavators and bulldozers apparently moving dirt near craters and holes on the northern mountain ridge at Fordow.
The main strike points for the bombs, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busters, per the Pentagon, were exhaust shafts that allowed the weapons to penetrate deep into the underground complex.
Other images capture what looks like construction equipment digging new access roads to the facility, as well as engaging in efforts to repair damage on the main access road. Iran may be attempting to restore access to the underground site in order to assess the condition of it and its equipment, though that’s not explicitly clear.
A Royal United Services Institute report from March of this year noted that if there wasn’t a long-term strike campaign that prevented Iran from doing so, “efforts to dig down to the facilities to re-establish access and supplies would likely begin almost immediately” after a strike on its nuclear program.
With the recent ceasefire, US and Israeli efforts to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities have ended. President Donald Trump has said the strikes “completely obliterated” the facilities, and Israel has determined that the strikes set Iran’s program back years.
Fordow was one of three nuclear sites targeted by the US in the strikes last weekend aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear program. The US also struck Natanz and Isfahan, the first with air-dropped bombs like Fordow and the second with sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The full damage to these sites and how degrading the strikes were to Iran’s overall program, stockpiles of enriched uranium, and equipment are unclear. The extent of the damage to the program is still being assessed.
RUSI experts previously speculated that a crippling strike on the Fordow fuel enrichment plant “would likely require multiple impacts at the same aiming point to have a good chance of penetrating the facility.”
At a Pentagon press briefing Thursday, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared that during the “Operation Midnight Hammer” strikes, MOP bunker-buster bombs were dropped one after another down exhaust shafts.
The general also shared that Defense Threat Reduction Agency personnel spent roughly 15 years studying Fordow and working on how best to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
US President Donald Trump has said Iran will never be able to rebuild the facilities. That is unclear. Other US and Israeli officials, as well as nuclear arms experts, have said the strikes set Iran’s ambitions back by a few months to years, but this is not the same as determining whether Iran can still build nuclear weapons.
It’s difficult to bomb a country’s knowledge out of existence, and there have been assessments that Iran may now be more eager to develop a nuclear weapon than before.
The US strikes came after Israel launched a new campaign earlier this month intended to degrade Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran argues is for civilian use. The US had been seeking to reach a nuclear deal with Iran through negotiation; however, it opted for an alternative approach this past weekend, hitting Iran instead and then calling for peace.
In retaliation for the US strikes, Iran fired ballistic missiles at a large US air base in Qatar this week. The US said none of Iran’s missiles hit the base. US leadership has said it had advanced notice about the strikes. A ceasefire has since gone into effect, stopping the exchanges of fire for the time being.
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