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24-05-2023
TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON: Near a peak of the Zagros Mountains in central Iran, workers are building a nuclear facility so deep in the earth that it is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch United States weapon designed to destroy such sites, according to experts and satellite imagery analyzed by media.
The photos and videos from Planet Labs PBC 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.
With the country now producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers, the installation complicates the West’s efforts to halt Tehran from potentially developing an atomic bomb, which Iran denies seeking.
The report on Monday comes amid a spike in Iran-US tensions and stalled diplomacy between the two countries.
Completion of such a facility “would be a nightmare scenario that risks igniting a new escalatory spiral,” warned Kelsey Davenport, the director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
“Given how close Iran is to a bomb, it has very little room to ratchet up its program without tripping US and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the risk of conflict,” Davenport told media.
This month marked five years since former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal that saw Iran scale back its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions against its economy.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has continued to impose and enforce a strict sanctions regime against Iran and its oil and petrochemicals industries. Meanwhile, Tehran has been advancing its nuclear program.
Biden, who was vice president to Barack Obama when the 2015 agreement was signed, had promised to revive the pact, but numerous rounds of indirect talks over the past two years have failed to restore it.
Since the demise of the nuclear accord, Iran has said it is enriching uranium up to 60 percent up from the 3.67 percent limit it observed under the deal. Inspectors also recently discovered the country had produced uranium particles that were 83.7 percent pure, just a short step from reaching the 90 percent threshold of weapons-grade uranium.
As of February, international inspectors estimated Iran’s stockpile was more than 10 times what it was under the Obama-era deal, with enough enriched uranium to allow Tehran to make “several” nuclear bombs, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
