TEHRAN: Israeli airstrikes dealt critical damage to a key Iranian nuclear facility during weekend airstrikes, according to the United Nations atomic watchdog, likely setting back Iran’s uranium fuel cycle by months. The IAEA reported that multiple Israeli strikes against Iran’s uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan, 400 km south of Tehran, resulted in serious damage. Successfully knocking out Isfahan would be significant because it’s the only location for converting uranium into the feedstock used by centrifuges, which in turn separate the uranium isotopes needed for nuclear power or bombs. The IAEA reported late Friday that Israel had so far failed to damage Iran’s Fordow enrichment complex, which is buried some 1,640 feet inside a mountain. Similarly, efforts to destroy to Iran’s primary enrichment facility in Natanz have been limited to surface structures, with no detected breaches to the heavily fortified underground enrichment halls.
Even without destroying Iran’s ability to enrich, Israel’s campaign has had some measured success after three days of bombing, experts said. Without Isfahan’s capacity to convert new volumes of raw uranium, Iran’s ability to make additional quantities of enriched product would be frozen. And while Iran has ample stockpiles of material, its ability to scale up would be limited.