Iran building vast network of underground tunnels at its Natanz nuclear site: Report
Iranian flag
A report on Thursday (June 16) by The New York Times suggests that Iran is constructing a vast new network of tunnels at its Natanz nuclear site. Such construction would help the nation house a massive enrichment facility that would be impenetrable to bunker-busting bombs and cyberattacks.
In the report, it is mentioned that construction at the site has been monitored for several months by the United States and Israel. However, no country divulged details before. Only Israel's Defense Minister Benny Gantz made a brief remark.
While speaking at a conference at Herzliya's Reichman University, he said, "At this very time, Iran is making an effort to complete the production and installation of 1,000 advanced IR6 centrifuges at its nuclear facilities, including a new facility being built at an underground site near Natanz."
Although, there's a difference between what US and Israel have analysed. The US states that the intelligence knew about it and is following the new facility for more than a year. The facilities would take years to complete.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials say that they believed Iran's goal is to enrich uranium in the underground facility with new, advanced centrifuges.
Last week, the UN nuclear watchdog told its member states that Iran has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges in a cluster at an underground enrichment plant in line with a longstanding plan and now intends to add two more such clusters or cascades.
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Iran's commercial-scale Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz is its biggest and was built underground, apparently to protect it from potential aerial bombardment.
A 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers only lets Iran use first-generation, IR-1 machines but in Washington's withdrawal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, Iran installed cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges, like the IR-2m and IR-4.
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