US strikes: How much damage has been done to Iran’s nuclear facilities?
Three of Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – were targeted in US airstrikes on 22 June.
The prime target of the attacks was Iran’s most advanced facility at Fordow, suspected of being used to enrich uranium close to what’s needed for a nuclear bomb.
Satellite images from the aftermath of the US strikes suggest at least six bombs were dropped there.
Satellite imagery of Fordow after the US bombing. Pic: Maxar Technologies
The secure nuclear facility, home to Iran’s main enrichment site, is buried deep under a mountain.
So exactly how much damage was done is unknown, perhaps even to Iran, which appears to have evacuated the site. The specific location of the strikes and the bombs used gives us an indication.
America used the 30,000-lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, or a GBU-57 – commonly known as a “bunker buster”.
The bunker buster is the only missile that had a chance of destroying the Fordow facility, and American planes were needed for them to be used.
Blueprints from Iran’s Nuclear Archive, which date from before 2004 and were seized by Israeli spies in 2018, suggest the bombs targeted the tunnels under the Fordow site.
Blueprints of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant suggest tunnels run through the mountain. Pic: Google Earth
The access tunnels overground lead to a 250 metre long hall which is thought to contain the uranium enrichment centrifuges, and well as the location of what is thought to be ventilation shafts.
Iran is thought to have likely moved any enriched uranium from the facility before the strikes occurred. But if the ventilation shafts were hit, that would allow the bombs to penetrate as far as possible and hit the centrifuge hall itself.
Iran’s major nuclear facilities seriously damaged, if not completely destroyed
The loss of industrial-scale centrifuge “cascades” used to enrich uranium will certainly derail any imminent deadlines in weaponisation the Islamic Republic may have set itself – more on that below.
But it has already amassed a sizeable stockpile of highly enriched uranium and may even have already enriched some of it to the 90% or so needed to make fissile material necessary for a bomb.
And despite strikes on industrial scale facilities that have taken decades to generate that stockpile, the material itself weighs less than half a tonne.
Moving it, splitting it up, concealing it, is not beyond the wit of a nation that expected these assaults may be coming.
Iran’s nuclear programme is also more than its large-scale facilities. Iran has been developing nuclear expertise and industrial processes for decades. It would take more than a concerted bombing campaign to wipe that out.
The final steps to “weaponise” highly enriched uranium are technically challenging, but Iran was known to be working on them more than 20 years ago.
Iran also does not require industrial-scale facilities like those needed to enrich uranium, meaning they could be more easily concealed in a network of smaller, discrete lab-sized buildings.
But what’s far from clear is whether Iran had actually taken steps towards weaponisation in recent years.
Recent US intelligence assessments indicated that it hadn’t. Iran’s leaders knew that very significant moves towards making a bomb would be seen as a major escalation by its neighbours and the international community.
For a long time, a key deterrent to Iran developing a nuclear weapon has been an internal political one.
It’s possible of course that position may have been shifting and these latest strikes were designed to disarm a rapidly weaponising Iran.
But it’s also possible the attacks on its nuclear programme may be forcing a previously tentative government to push harder towards making a nuclear bomb.
Fordow is only one of three nuclear facilities targeted in America’s strike, however, and one of seven that have been targeted since the conflict began.
Natanz’s uranium enrichment facility, about 140 km south of Fordow, had been subject to multiple Israeli strikes before America’s advance.
Israeli raids targeted surface buildings, including stores of enriched uranium. However, post-strike radiation monitoring suggested there was little, if any, nuclear material there.
At the weekend, Americans dropped bunker-buster bombs there too, targeting thousands of enrichment centrifuges operating in bunkers below.
Destruction at the Natanz Enrichment Complex from satellite imagery. Pic: Maxar Technologies
Then there is the Isfahan complex. Again, Israeli missiles destroyed a number of buildings there last week. And at the weekend, US cruise missiles targeted others, including the uranium conversion plant.
At the weekend, Americans also dropped bunker-buster bombs there, targeting thousands of enrichment centrifuges operating in bunkers below.
Satellite imagery shows the impact on the Isfahan Nuclear Complex. facility. Pic: Maxar Technologies
Speaking from the White House after the attacks, Donald Trump said facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated”. But experts suggest it could take more to destroy it entirely.
“This is a very well-developed, long-standing programme with a lot of latent expertise in the country,” said Darya Dolzikova, a proliferation and nuclear security expert at RUSI, a UK defence and security thinktank
“I don’t think we’re talking about a full elimination at this point, certainly not by military means.”
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Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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