Israel Attacks Iran's Three Key Nuclear Facilities: The Extent Of Damage Explained
An Israeli military official said at a briefing on Saturday that strikes on Iran's nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan were able to damage the sites 'significantly'
Israel targeted three key Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow – and a number of top scientists involved in nuclear research and development.
An Israeli military official said at a briefing on Saturday that strikes on Iran's nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan were able to damage the sites 'significantly". Iran has maintained that damage to the facilities was limited.
'We are at a key point where if we miss it, we will have no way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons that will threaten our existence," Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.
The strikes destroyed the above-ground part of Natanz's Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, a sprawling site that has been operating since 2003 and where Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90%.
Electrical infrastructure at Natanz – including the main power supply building, plus emergency and back-up generators – was also destroyed, the IAEA said.
As much of the Natanz facility is heavily fortified and underground, wiping out the power to those parts of the facility is the most effective way to impact underground equipment and machinery. It does not appear that Israel damaged those underground parts of the plant directly, the IAEA said, but the loss of power to the underground cascade hall 'may have damaged the centrifuges there".
Natanz has six above-ground buildings and three underground buildings, two of which can hold 50,000 centrifuges, according to the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium by spinning the gas at high speeds. 'The level of radioactivity outside the Natanz site has remained unchanged and at normal levels," the IAEA said. 'However, due to the impacts, there is radiological and chemical contamination inside the facilities in Natanz," it added – though the levels would be manageable.
ISFAHAN
Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said Saturday that damage at the site – Iran's largest nuclear research complex – was limited. Equipment at the two facilities was moved in anticipation of the strikes, Kamalvandi said. A shed at the facility caught fire, he added, and there is no risk of contamination.
But Israel were more bullish; an IDF official said during a Saturday briefing that the site took significant damage.
The facility was built with support from China and opened in 1984, the NTI said. According to the non-profit, 3,000 scientists are employed at Isfahan, and the site is 'suspected of being the center" of Iran's nuclear program.
It 'operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors," as well as a 'conversion facility, a fuel production plant, a zirconium cladding plant, and other facilities and laboratories," the NTI said.
At a Saturday briefing, an IDF official said Israel had 'concrete intelligence" that Iran was 'moving forward to a nuclear bomb" at the Isfahan facility. Despite advancing its uranium enrichment significantly, Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denied that it was developing an atomic bomb.
FORDOW
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is a far more difficult site to target. The plant is buried deep in the mountains near Qom, in northern Iran, and houses advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium up to high grades of purity.
Israel targeted the site during its Friday attacks, but the IAEA said it was not impacted and the IDF has not claimed any significant damage there. Iranian air defenses shot down an Israeli drone in the vicinity of the plant, Iranian state media Press TV reported Friday evening.
Fordow's fate could be pivotal to the overall success of Israel's attacks.
In 2023, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that uranium particles enriched to 83.7% purity – which is close to the 90% enrichment levels needed to make a nuclear bomb – had been found in Fordow.
'If Fordow remains operational, Israel's attacks may barely slow Iran's path to the bomb," James M. Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on Friday.
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Acton said Israel might be able to collapse the entrance to the facility, but noted that destroying much more of the Fordow site will be a difficult task for Israel.
With CNN Inputs
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First Published:
June 15, 2025, 18:19 IST
News explainers Israel Attacks Iran's Three Key Nuclear Facilities: The Extent Of Damage Explained
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