NATANZ ENRICHMENT FACILITY
Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, located some 220km southeast of Tehran, is the country’s main enrichment site and had already been targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Uranium had been enriched to up to 60 per cent purity at the site – a mildly radioactive level but a short step away from weapons grade – before Israel destroyed the aboveground part of the facility, according to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Another part of the facility on Iran’s Central Plateau is underground to defend against potential airstrikes. It operates multiple cascades, or groups of centrifuges working together to more quickly enrich uranium. The IAEA has said it believes that most, if not all, of these centrifuges were destroyed by an Israeli strike that cut off power to the site.
The IAEA said those strikes caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area.
Iran is also burrowing into the Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, or Pickax Mountain, which is just beyond Natanz’s southern fencing. Natanz has been targeted by the Stuxnet virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Two separate attacks, attributed to Israel, also have struck the facility.
