NOT NEARLY AS GOOD AS DESTROYING IRAN'S NUCLEAR SITES

Israel targeted secret nuclear weapons research in Iran strikes last month — report

Parchin military base held equipment to design explosives for use in a nuclear bomb

 

The Times of Israel

Nov 15, 2024

 

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Parchin military base outside of Tehran, Iran, October 27, 2024. The damaged structures are in the bottom right corner and bottom center of the image.

 

Israel’s airstrikes in Iran last month destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, the Axios news site reported Friday, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.

The report came as the UN nuclear watchdog prepares to vote on censuring Iran for refusing to cooperate with its inspectors, and amid a report that the Islamic Republic told the Biden administration last month it would not seek to assassinate US president-elect Donald Trump.

According to Axios, an Israeli strike on Parchin — part of an hours-long operation on October 26, which came in response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel — destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the explosives that could surround uranium in a nuclear device, significantly damaging Iran’s efforts to resume its nuclear weapons research.

The “Taleghan 2” complex was already known to have been targeted in the strikes — as testified by satellite imagery — and was already recognized as having been a site of Iran’s earlier nuclear program which officially shut down in 2003.

US and Israeli intelligence reportedly began to detect new activity at the site earlier this year, including computer modeling, metallurgy and research on explosives, that would be relevant to creating a nuclear device.

“They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a weapon. It was a top-secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t,” a US official told Axios.

 

In this illustrative image, an Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through a facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, March 30, 2005.

Knowledge of the research at Taleghan 2 reportedly prompted the US Director of National Intelligence to change its official assessment of Iran’s nuclear program in August, which had previously noted Iran was “not currently undertaking” the activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.

Israel is not known to have hit other nuclear sites in the October 26 airstrikes, when dozens of Israeli aircraft took out air drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries.

The US urged Israel to refrain from hitting nuclear sites in the attack, to avoid triggering a major escalation with Iran, though it endorsed Israel’s move in responding to Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, when the Islamic Republic shot 181 ballistic missiles at Israel, its second such direct attack since April.

According to Axios, Israel made an exception for Taleghan 2, because the site was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program — which the Islamic Republic denies has a military component, but acknowledges as a supposedly civilian enterprise.

Had Iran acknowledged the significance of the attack, it would have in the process admitted its own violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“The strike was a not-so-subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” a US official told Axios.

The news site also quoted Israeli officials who said the strike would make it much harder for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so.

“This equipment is a bottleneck. Without it the Iranians are stuck,” a senior Israeli official said.

“This is equipment the Iranians would need in the future if they want to make progress towards a nuclear bomb. Now they don’t have it anymore and it is not trivial. They will need to find another solution and we will see it,” the official added.