Iran reportedly has around 20k lbs of uranium total. Other than being uranium enriched to various levels, It’s not that hard to move that amount of material in a week and a half.
We know that the important people were gone. We can be reasonably sure that most of the critical material was removed. Were any significant amounts of the equipment removed? Even if not, how hard is the equipment to replace?
Is this something that one could (not want to, could they) set up in a system of random looking warehouses across Iran and get back to work?
Given that Israel has been assassinating high ranking Iranians left and right, I don’t have much confidence in Iran’s ability to secretly move the material without Israel knowing.
20 kg is only about 45 pounds of stuff. Stuff that is, in fact, safer to keep around if you divide it into small piles. Sub-divide it into itty bitty lumps, put each lump in a shielded container to protect the person holding it, distribute it amongst oh, I don’t know 20-40 people and tell them all to go to ground. Even mighty Israeli intelligence isn’t likely to keep track of all of that in the fog of war. Voilà! Iran’s supply of uranium is (mostly) safe.
Alright, probably not the scenario that actually occurred, but if I can think of stuff like that so can the Iranians. In fact, I expect they’d come up with much better plans.
Sure. But right after the war started, a bunch of high ranking army officials had a meeting - one scheduled by Mossad agents - where they were all killed together. So while it’s possible the Iranians had an even better idea, it’s fairly likely Israel had agents in the room when the idea was announced. Or at least, would have intercepted the orders to move the uranium.
According to the IAEA, Iran’s total inventory of enriched uranium as of May 17 was approximately 9,250 kilograms. This figure includes 8,400 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride gas; 620 kilograms of uranium oxide; 71 kilograms of uranium metal in fuel assemblies, plates, and rods; 4 kilograms of uranium in targets; and about 140 kilograms of uranium in liquid and solid scrap (radioactive waste).
BTW, I wondered about Fordo versus Fordow. I thought perhaps Trump misspelled the place name when his social media post said Fordow. But according to Wikipedia,
Fordo is a village in Fordo Rural District, Kahak County, Qom province, Iran. It was formerly the capital of the district. It is near the Shia holy city of Qom. The Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, is not related to the village of Fordo, as it is 100 km away.
I’m sure that Israel has been keeping an eye, at least, on any trucks leaving the Fordow facility. And once the air attack started, probably destroying any vehicles leaving there.
The Farsi language doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. Any Western spelling will necessarily be a transliterated approximation.
There may be Westernized versions of Farsi words and names which are widely accepted. For example, the Supreme Leader’s name is
علی خامنهای
which is pretty universally represented as Ali Khamenei.
Other words, however, may have variations based on who’s doing the translating and how they prefer to show different sounds, especially those that don’t have a direct equivalent outside Farsi.
For example, the crispy layer of rice at the bottom of the pot is called
ته دیگ
which has a sound at the end that’s like a swallowed G. I’ve seen it spelled tadig, tahdig, tadigh, and at least three or four other ways.
Fordo, in the Farsi alphabet, is
فردو
Whether one chooses to render this as “Fordo” or “Fordow,” both of these are, again, necessarily approximations. Neither is “spelled correctly.”
Wikipedia suggests that Fordo is a village 100 kilometers from the Fordow uranium enrichment facility. Note that the NYT calls the facility Fordo, so I am not sure what is correct.
My wife was born in Tehran and speaks Farsi fluently as her first language. She doesn’t know why the facility is named as it is but she says that spelling (in Farsi) is correct either way, whether you’re referring to the village or the facility.
A New York Times analysis of satellite imagery shows that the United States targeted Fordo, Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment facility, at the precise locations of two structures that experts said might be ventilation shafts.
I had thought they were going to send a sequence of bombs directed at the deeply underground facility itself. I would assume that the ventilation shafts would move sideways before reaching centrifuge central.
“Hitting a ventilation shaft would make sense, because the hole for air already penetrates the thick rock, interrupting its integrity,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
I don’t follow why this makes sense, because I’m not a military engineer.
Also:
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said it had not detected any increase in off-site radiation levels at the three Iranian nuclear sites following the U.S. attack, and that it was continuing to assess the situation and would provide further updates.
I would think it would be difficult (not impossible) to obliterate one of these sites without radiation leakage.
Ever work with wood? It’s a lot easier to drill a big hole when there’s already a small pilot hole. Nor do these bunker buster bombs need a direct hit: The idea is that the bomb gets deep enough underground before detonating that the shockwaves (which can be much more powerful traveling through rock than through air) cave in any open areas (like, say, the facility) nearby.
How does a solid leak out of a hole in the ground? A hole in the ground that’s mostly filled in with rubble, at that.
Brings to mind “No, no Kato! Now is not the time! … now is the time!”
Apparently the Russians in Ukraine are using GPS on the front lines so I would be very surprised if they are not using this tech in Iran… I wonder how easy it is to spoof GPS.
meanwhile Iran is saying Fordo is Ok. Time will tell…
Dust. Have you ever seen a blast in the ground? Clouds of dust.
These bombs are massive, and rely on the shockwave travelling through rock to destroy the actual target. Putting a bomb at the bottom of a ventilation shaft is a good way to bring that shockwave close to the target.