Surprisingly, one of Iran’s options is to reinstall the centrifuges at Fordow. The Defense Intelligence Agency report concludes that while the strike damaged the electrical system and collapsed the entrance tunnels,
the underground enrichment hall remains intact. This helps explain why all these other underground facilities weren’t attacked. They are even deeper than Fordow. I guess
the United States is going to need a bigger MOP.
All told,
Iran likely retains the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that the IAEA said Iran had produced, as well as an extensive network of underground facilities to produce centrifuges, enrich the material further, and assemble it into a small stockpile of nuclear weapons if that’s what it chooses to do. It’s no surprise that the DIA thinks the program hasn’t been set back all that much.
Perhaps it is hard to square the limited impact of the bombing with the spectacular appearance of a bombing campaign, with its screaming missiles and thunderous explosions. It says a lot that one of the most impressive displays of airpower in history did so little to damage Iran’s nuclear program. This is precisely why, at the outset of the campaign, I made clear that the strike would likely only succeed if the Iranian regime fell.
While regime change by airpower always seemed to be a desperately long shot, it was somehow still more plausible than the obliteration of a
large, dispersed, and deeply buried nuclear program such as Iran’s. I think that the Israelis knew that, too. After all, Netanyahu named the operation
Rising Lion, after the national symbol of prerevolutionary Iran. Israel’s national animal is the gazelle.
Either way, I am sure the inevitable internal discussions in Iran will now look different, not least because there are going to be a number of new faces at the table. The United States and Israel have changed the regime in some sense—just maybe not in the way that they hoped.
Satellite imagery confirms that Iranian capabilities are bruised, not annihilated.
foreignpolicy.com