Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site is at Fordo, a hilly area south of Tehran and about 15 miles away from Qum, a city where more than a million people live.
Iran built the heart of the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant deep inside a mountain in order to withstand an attack. Estimates put the enrichment facilities at half a mile below ground, and experts had said they were impervious to all but a repeated assault from American “bunker buster” bombs. A U.S. official said that six B-2 bombers dropped a dozen 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on the Fordo site on Sunday.
President Trump said the U.S. strikes on Fordo and two other Iranian nuclear sites, Natanz and Isfahan, had been successful, and that the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” Iran confirmed that the sites had been hit, calling the attack “a violent act against international laws,” but did not comment on the extent of any damage.
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.
The Fordo site contains thousands of Iran’s most advanced centrifuges and is considered crucial for Iran to enrich uranium to 60 percent, a level from which enrichment to bomb grade — 90 percent or higher — can be relatively rapid. The government in Tehran kept the facility secret for years, but its existence emerged in Western intelligence and Iran formally disclosed the site in 2009.
In March 2023, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported that it had discovered uranium that had been enriched to 83.7 percent purity at Fordo.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program, which is spread over several sites and facilities, is solely for peaceful use.
For years, however, Israel has viewed an assault on Fordo as central to its goal of destroying Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons, something that Mr. Netanyahu has called an existential threat to his country.
Just before the Israeli government began its military campaign on June 13, the I.A.E.A. said that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the first time the agency had passed a resolution against the country in 20 years.
Yan Zhuang contributed reporting.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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