It happened last week. The Israeli operation Am Kalavi (growing lion) about Iran was not a simple more attack. The offensive, today turned into a battle between the two nations, looks for two things that will hardly happen in the short term. The first: to cause the fall of the Ayatolás regime with a call to the population to get up against their rulers. The second: dismantling the nuclear program, and at that point a great name highlighted: Fordow.
The nuclear mountain. Yes, in the heart of Israel’s strategic concerns, an imposing structure stands, invisible to the naked eye but decisive in the nuclear dispute with Iran: the enrichment of fordow’s uranium, excavated half a kilometer under a rocky mountain near the sacred city of Qom.
This underground bunker, surrounded by an air defenses ring and protected by reinforced concrete, represents both a symbol of the Iranian determination by shielding its nuclear program as an extreme technical challenge for any attempt to destruction from the air. For Israeli strategists, Fordow not only amounts to an impenetrable geological strength, but also the possible genesis of a “nuclear break” (break out), that is, the point of no return in which Iran can convert its highly enriched uranium in material suitable for nuclear weapons.
Two approaches, two threats. While Israel managed to inflict significant damage in Natanz (another more exposed and less deep enrichment plant) through attacks that possibly disabled its electrical and centrifuging infrastructure, Fordow remains active despite attempts, with intact operating capabilities and greater resistance to conventional attacks.
According to the analysis of the Institute for International Science and Security (ISIS), Fordow houses 408 kg of highly enriched uranium and could process 25 kg of uranium suitable for weapons in just two or three days, enough to make up to nine nuclear bombs in three weeks.
Antibunker bombs. Unlike Natanz, ForDow is designed not for large -scale civil enrichment, but to guarantee the continuity of the program even after an attack, something that underlines its strategic importance. Buried much deeper than its counterpart, not even the most powerful antibunker bombs in the United States, such as the Massive Ordance Penetrator, could guarantee its total destruction.
Satellite image of the area where fordow is buried
Secret and legacy Origins. The Financial Times told the weekend that Fordow was built in secret and was revealed in 2009 through an intelligence declassification led by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, which caused a rare public conviction of Russia and a call for attention from China. Despite international pressure, Iran defended the legality of the site and its supposedly peaceful character.
That revelation gave rise to harder sanctions and, finally, to its inclusion in the 2015 Multilateral Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), through which Iran agreed to reconvert Fordow in a research center, reduce the number of centrifugers, suspend enrichment and undergo reinforced inspections. What happened? That the withdrawal of the United States from the agreement in 2018, under the presidency of Trump, reactivated the Iranian nuclear ambitions and, after a sabotage in Natanz in 2021 attributed to Israel, Fordow again functioned as an operational nucleus of the 60%enrichment program.
Risk of a nuclear break. The current fear does not lies only in the existence of Fordow, but that this installation can become the axis of a deliberate rupture of the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty, a scenario in which they would abandon their commitments with the International Atomic Energy Agency (OIEA), would accelerate enrichment and assemble nuclear weapons to counterreloj.
All assumptions, but this possibility is aggravated by the development of a new even deeper and sophisticated complex in the Kolang Gaz Lā mountain, also known as Pickoxe, south of Natanz. Unlike Fordow, Pickoxe has at least four entries and more underground space, which complicates any closing attempt by bombing. Plus: Iran has so far prevented the OIEA to inspect this new installation, which feeds suspicions about the possible concealment of fistible material or even the clandestine construction of a nuclear pump in case of open conflict.
Historical precedent. ForDow is the only great underground military base in the world that has been directly attacked, a fact that marks a milestone in the risks assumed by Israel by authorizing attacks against such sensitive objectives. Although American intelligence evaluations do not indicate that Iran has formally resumed a nuclear weapons program since it suspended it in 2003, the technical infrastructure, the accumulation of uranium and the strategic disposition of facilities such as Fordow and Pickoxe indicate that, if Tehran decided to take that step, the material media are already ready.
In this context, Israeli attacks not only seek to prevent imminent nuclear development, but also send a deterrent message to an eventual “breakdown” Iranian. However, any escalation could drag the United States into the conflict and redraw the map of alliances and tensions in a region already overloaded with atomic rivalries.
The enigma of the mountain. Therefore, ForDow is not just a nuclear site: it is a symbol of resistance, suspicion, ambition and mutual fear. If you want to also, it represents the Iranian determination to protect your program at all costs and the conviction that your mere existence is an existential threat.
In fact, its geological depth is also the metaphor of the complex and rooted of the nuclear dilemma in the Middle East: a combination of technical, tactical and diplomatic challenges that not even the most powerful bombs can solve by themselves.
Imagen | Maxar
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