Critical damage dealt to key Iranian nuclear site, says UN atomic watchdog

TEHRAN – Israeli air strikes dealt critical damage to a key Iranian nuclear facility during weekend air strikes, according to the United Nations atomic watchdog, likely setting back the Islamic Republic’s uranium fuel cycle by months.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that multiple Israeli strikes against Iran’s uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan, 400km south of Tehran, resulted in serious damage.

Successfully knocking out Isfahan would be significant because it is the only location for converting uranium into the feedstock used by centrifuges that, in turn, separate the uranium isotopes needed for nuclear power or bombs.

The IAEA reported late on June 13 that Israel had so far failed to damage Iran’s Fordow enrichment complex, which is buried some 500m inside a mountain.

Similarly, efforts to destroy Iran’s primary enrichment facility in Natanz have been

limited to surface structures

, with no detected breaches to the heavily fortified underground enrichment halls.

Diplomats will

convene in Vienna on June 16

for an emergency session of the IAEA’s board of governors.

They are expected to discuss Israel’s ongoing efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, as well the interruption to the IAEA’s ability to verify the country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.

Even without destroying Iran’s ability to enrich, Israel’s campaign has had some measured success after three days of bombing, according to experts.

Without Isfahan’s capacity to convert new volumes of raw uranium, Iran’s ability to make additional quantities of enriched product would be frozen. And while Iran has ample stockpiles of existing material, its ability to scale up would be limited.

“If you interrupt that piece of the flow-sheet, the fuel cycle doesn’t work anymore,” said Mr Robert Kelley, a US nuclear engineer who led inspections for the IAEA in Iraq and Libya. “The front end of their programme dies.”

Converting raw uranium involves mixing the ore with fluorine, creating a highly corrosive feedstock. Highly specialised machines are needed to run the process. Unless Iran has spare gear in stock, it may take significant time for Tehran to reboot its uranium fuel cycle, Mr Kelley said.

Deeper underground

The risk for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that extending the military campaign could drive the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities deeper underground, ending access to UN-backed inspectors and potentially hardening Tehran’s resolve.

Iran

responded to the attacks

by targeting Israeli cities with hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones from late on June 13.

Israel’s leaders will sift through the damage reports in the coming days and decide whether to press ahead with the strikes.

The campaign, a long-promised fulfilment of Mr Netanyahu’s promise to target the nuclear programme, also killed nine leading scientists whose expertise was crucial for Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“There’s obviously not yet a full assessment,” said Ms Suzanne Maloney, a vice-president at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

But the combination of strikes and the killing of key security and nuclear personnel is “going to make it very difficult for Iran to reconstitute the programme to the level that it was at prior to these attacks”, she said.

Experts said the air strikes will make it tougher to monitor Iran’s atomic activities, given that UN inspectors probably will not be given access to sites for a long time. The attack is also unlikely to end Tehran’s nuclear programme even if progress is slowed, said Ms Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association.

“There’s a real risk that Iran may divert uranium, enriched to near-weapons-grade levels, to a covert location, or that due to the damage, the IAEA may not be able to account for all of Iran’s nuclear materials,” Ms Davenport said.

Iran’s 400kg of highly enriched uranium could fit in three or four easily concealed cylinders, said Mr Kelley, the nuclear-weapons engineer.

Concern has mounted that Iran could use the material as the feedstock for a weapon, should it follow through with threats to opt out of the UN’s Non-Proliferation Treaty – a key global initiative to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons – and kick out inspectors. BLOOMBERG