Iran is building new nuclear site that Western powers may not be able to destroy

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Iran is building a new nuclear site so deep underground it will likely be beyond the scope of destruction by Western powers, the Associated Press reports. The new site is being built five years after the US unilaterally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran deal; international talks on reviving the deal have so far failed.

Satellite imagery and videos from Planet Labs PBC show the new site is close to the Natanz nuclear site in the Zagros Mountains in central Iran.

Experts have said the size of the site being built indicates it will be used not only to build centrifuges but to enrich uranium to the levels needed for an atomic bomb. 

“The depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder for us… to destroy using conventional weapons, such as a typical bunker buster bomb,” Steven De La Fuente, a research associate at the center who led the analysis of the building work, told AP.

In a separate statement about the new site, Kelsey Davenport, the director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said its development “would be a nightmare scenario that risks igniting a new escalatory spiral,” AP reports.

“Given how close Iran is to a bomb, it has very little room to ratchet up its program without tripping US and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the risk of conflict,” Davenport said.

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