Satellite images taken in the days after the American attack on Iran’s Fordo nuclear enrichment site show a flurry of activity at the heavily fortified facility built deep inside a mountain.
New roads can be seen constructed to the points where U.S. bombs struck the top of the mountain, and an apparent crane and an excavator seem to be working near one of the impact sites. Many other vehicles are also visible at additional points around the site in the images, which were captured by Maxar Technologies.
“It appears that they’re evaluating the hole, evaluating how deep it went,” said Joseph S. Bermudez, senior fellow for imagery analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The images are showing us that the Iranians are beginning the process of investigating what happened and what level of damage the facility has.”
American B-2 bombers dropped 12 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bombs often called “bunker busters” — on the Fordo enrichment site on June 22. Afterward, President Trump said the facility was “obliterated,” though other assessments have been more cautious.
Experts said the Iranians were most likely using the newly constructed roads and equipment to assess the damage themselves.
“It looks to me like they’re examining the impact of the event rather than doing any thing more substantial like carrying out repairs or recovery. I don’t think I see any evidence of that,” said Peter McDonald, a director at Viper Applied Science, a company that specializes in blast and structural dynamics and computational physics.
A day after the American attacks, Israel said it had also hit Fordo, striking access routes to the site.
Satellite imagery shows that repairs began quickly: By June 27, Iran had already filled in a large crater at the site’s entrance left by the Israeli strikes a few days earlier, the images show.
Iran doesn’t appear to be beginning any type of reconstruction or repairs to the enrichment facility itself.
“I don’t think they’ve moved into the phase of reactivation,” Mr. Bermudez said. “There’s no real evidence for that. You would expect to see more vehicles, different types of vehicles.”
James Glanz contributed reporting.
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