Fordow: What we know about Iran’s secretive ‘nuclear mountain’ – and how Israel might try to destroy it
Deep beneath a mountain, hundreds of centrifuges spin, enriching Iran’s uranium that Israel suspects is destined for a nuclear weapon.
The Fordow plant is protected by tonnes upon tonnes of dirt and rock, far away from prying eyes – and foreign missiles.
But as Israeli warplanes fly unchecked above Tehran, with much of the Islamic Republic’s air defences turned to smoking ruins on the ground, attention has moved to the secretive facility.
Some say only the American B-2 stealth bomber and its massive payload could breach the so-called “nuclear mountain”, while others argue troops on the ground might be able to infiltrate its corridors. Or maybe it is simply impossible, short of a nuclear strike.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking a nuclear weapon and the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said in June that it has no proof of a “systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon”.
A satellite image shows the Fordow nuclear facility. Pic: Maxar Technologies/Reuters
What is the Fordow facility?
The Fordow enrichment plant is one of three key pieces of nuclear infrastructure in Iran – the others being the Natanz enrichment plant and research facilities in Isfahan.
It is thought to be buried around 80m deep into the side of the mountain. It was previously protected by Iranian and Russian surface-to-air missile systems, but these may have wholly or partially knocked out during Israel’s recent attacks.
Construction is believed to have started in around 2006 and it first became operational in 2009 – the same year Tehran publicly acknowledged its existence.
Key sites at Fordow including tunnel entrances
In November 2020, it was believed there were 1,057 centrifuges at Fordow. These are used to separate isotopes and increase the concentration of uranium-235, needed for nuclear fuel and weapons.
In 2023, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the nuclear watchdog – found uranium particles enriched to 83.7% purity – near the 90% needed for a bomb – at Fordow, the only Iranian facility where this has been found.
In June 2024, the Washington Post reported on a major expansion at Fordow, with nearly 1,400 new centrifuges earmarked for the subterranean facility.
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Will Israel try to destroy Fordow?
Israel has made no secret of its desire to cripple or remove Iran’s nuclear programme, describing it as an existential threat.
There is much that remains elsewhere in Iran that is capable of producing and using nuclear material.
“But of course the real big piece remains at Fordow still and this has been in the headlines quite a bit,” says Dr Alexander Bollfrass, an expert on nuclear weapons from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) thinktank.
There is also the chance that an increased focus on diplomacy brings the war to an end before the IDF can make a run at Fordow.
Centrifuge machines at Natanz – similar to ones held at Fordow. Pic: AP
Could bunker buster bombs be used?
There has been a lot of talk about bunker buster bombs. These are munitions that explode twice – once to breach the ground surface and again once the bomb has burrowed down to a certain depth.
The Israelis used 60 to 80 of them in the strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September last year, according to Martin “Sammy” Sampson, a former air marshal and executive director at the IISS.
But Nasrallah was only 10-15m underground, Mr Sampson said, while Fordow is believed to be 80m beneath the surface.
“An awful lot of planes would be in the same place for an awful long time” to drop enough bombs to have a chance of getting to the buried facility, he added.
A GBU-57 bunker buster bomb seen in 2023. File pic: US Air Force/AP
There is also the possibility that the US, which operates the much more powerful GBU-57 bomb, could assist with any operation at Fordow.
“My sense is that it would still take multiple strikes,” Mr Sampson said, putting it in “more and more unknown territory”.
“It would be pretty disastrous… if you put 400 planes over the top of Fordow, or you put the might of the US over Fordow, and it survived.”
Israel’s ‘contingencies’ for dealing with Fordow
Israel has suggested that it could destroy or cripple Fordow without using bombs dropped from the air.
Speaking to Sky’s Yalda Hakim earlier this week, former Mossad director of intelligence Zohar Palti said it was “much easier for the Americans to do it”, possibly referring to the GBU-57.
“But as you see, we know how to run things alone,” he added. “And if we need to do some other stuff alone, we will do it.”
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Sky’s Yalda Hakim speaks to Zohar Palti
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Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said last weekend that Israel has “a number of contingencies… which will enable us to deal with Fordow”.
“Not everything is a matter of, you know, taking to the skies and bombing from afar,” he told ABC News.
There has been talk of using special forces to raid the facility on the ground, but that has its downsides as well.
“This would be an incredibly high risk mission if you were to do something on the ground,” said Mr Sampson.
There is also the possibility Israel could replicate what happened at the Natanz enrichment plant, where the IAEA said 15,000 centrifuges were likely destroyed in the IDF bombardment of Iran.
This was possibly due to an Israeli airstrike disrupting the power supply to the centrifuges, rather than actual physical damage to the centrifuge hall, according to the nuclear watchdog.
Vladimir Putin has played down the possibility of a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that while it is possible, certain conditions must be met.
The Russian president was responding to an American proposal of a trilateral meeting between him, the Ukrainian president and Donald Trump.
The idea was floated by Steve Witkoff, the US president’s envoy during talks with Mr Putin on Wednesday, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
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Mr Ushakov said the three-way option was “simply mentioned by the American representative during the meeting in the Kremlin”.
He added, however: “This option was not specifically discussed.”
On the prospect of meeting Mr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin said: “I have already said many times that I have nothing against it in general – it is possible.”
However, he distanced himself from any such meeting happening soon, adding: “But certain conditions must be created for this. Unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”
Pic: AP
Mr Zelenskyy offered to speak to Vladimir Putin in May, challenging him to meet in Istanbul for talks on ending the war in Ukraine – an invitation the Russian leader declined.
While a trilateral meeting appears to be off the agenda, Mr Ushakov said an agreement had been reached for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to meet “in the coming days”.
After the US president touted a “very good prospect” of the leaders meeting for Ukraine ceasefire talks, Mr Ushakov said on Thursday that Russian and American officials had started working on the details.
“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement was essentially reached to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days,” he said.
“We are now beginning concrete preparations together with our American colleagues.”
Regarding a trilateral meeting, Mr Ushakov said: “We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive.”
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Will Putin agree to Trump’s condition to meet Zelenskyy?
It would be the first time the two leaders have met since Mr Trump returned to office, and follows a three-hour meeting between Mr Putin and Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.
Following the meeting, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it appeared that Russia was “more inclined to a ceasefire”.
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The Ukrainian president said he planned to speak on Thursday to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as contacts from France and Italy.
He said he planned to discuss a ceasefire, a leaders’ summit and long-term security, adding: “Ukraine has never wanted war and will work toward peace as productively as possible.”
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A poll from Gallup suggests 69% of Ukrainians support a negotiated end to the war with Russia – an almost complete reversal from 2022, when 73% favoured fighting until victory.
Most said they were sceptical the war would end soon, with 68% saying they believed it was unlikely that active fighting would stop within the next 12 months.
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Seven hours is a long time in US politics.
At 10am, Donald Trump accused Russia of posing a threat to America’s national security.
By 5pm, Mr Trump said there was a “good prospect” of him meeting Vladimir Putin “soon”.
There had, he claimed, been “great progress” in talks between his special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president.
It’s difficult to gauge the chances of a meeting between the two leaders without knowing what “great progress” means.
Is Russia “inclined” towards agreeing a ceasefire, as Ukraine’s president now claims?
Is Mr Putin prepared to meet with his Ukrainian foe, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, too?
The very fact that we’re asking those questions suggests something shifted on a day when there was no expectation of a breakthrough.
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Staff at a zoo in Germany which culled 12 baboons and fed some of their carcasses to the lions say they have received death threats.
Tiergarten Nuremberg euthanised the healthy Guinea baboons at the end of July due to overcrowding in their enclosure.
Some remains were used for research while the rest were fed to the zoo’s carnivores.
Plans to kill the baboons were first announced last year after the population exceeded 40, and protestors gathered outside the zoo to show their outrage.
When the site closed last Tuesday to carry out the cull, several activists were arrested after climbing the fence.
The director of the zoo defended the decision, saying efforts to sterilise and rehome some baboons had failed.
“We love these animals. We want to save a species. But for the sake of the species, we have to kill individuals otherwise we are not able to keep up a population in a restricted area,” Dr Dag Encke told Sky News.
These are not the specific animals involved. File pics: Reuters
‘The staff are suffering’
He said police are investigating after he and the staff were sent death threats.
“The staff are really suffering, sorting out all these bad words, insults and threats,” Dr Encke said.
“The normal threat is ‘we will kill you, and we’ll feed you to the lions’.
“But what is really disgusting is when they say that’s worse than Dr Mengele from the National Socialists, who was one of the most cruel people in human history.
“That is really insulting all the victims of the Second World War and the Nazi regime.”
Josef Mengele was a Nazi officer who performed deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War.
Dr Dag Encke
Zoo animals ‘treated as commodities’
Culling animals and feeding them to predators isn’t unheard of in zoos.
In 2014, Copenhagen Zoo caused controversy by euthanizing an 18-month-old male giraffe called Marius and feeding his body to the lions.
At the time, the zoo said it was due to a duty to avoid inbreeding.
Dr Mark Jones, a vet and head of policy at Born Free Foundation, a charity which campaigns for animals to be kept in the wild, denounced the practice and said thousands of healthy animals are being destroyed by zoos each year.
“It reflects the fact animals in zoos are often treated as commodities that are disposable or replaceable,” he said.
Marius the giraffe was put down and publicly fed to lions at at Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark. Pic: Keld Navntoft/AFP/Getty
Zoo asks for unwanted pets
Earlier this week, a zoo in Denmark faced a backlash for asking for unwanted pets to be donated to be used as food for its predators.
In a Facebook post, Aalborg Zoo said it could take smaller live animals such as chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, as well as horses under 147cm. It said the animals would be euthanised by specially trained staff before being fed to carnivores like the European lynx.
While some people supported the scheme, saying they had donated animals in the past, others are outraged.
“The very idea of a zoo offering to take unwanted pets in order to kill them and feed them to their predators will, I think, horrify most right-minded people,” said Dr Jones.
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Dr Mark Jones
Aalborg Zoo has now closed the post to comments and said in a statement: “For many years at Aalborg Zoo, we have fed our carnivores with smaller livestock.
“When keeping carnivores, it is necessary to provide them with meat, preferably with fur, bones, etc., to give them as natural a diet as possible.
“Therefore, it makes sense to allow animals that need to be euthanised for various reasons to be of use in this way.
“In Denmark, this practice is common, and many of our guests and partners appreciate the opportunity to contribute.”
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