Posted on 11/16/2024 1:14:28 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
(Nov. 16, 2024 / JNS) The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three U.S. officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed U.S. official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a U.S. official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
“He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.”
“Hans, Hans, you’re breaking my balls.”
“I told you Hans, we don’t have any weapons of mass distruction”
It wasn’t that secret if the Israelis knew about it.
The Israeli’s aren’t sitting around and hoping that the Iranian’s don’t develop a nuclear device... They know everything... They know things about Iran, that Iranian’s don’t know... They have people on the inside of that regime and it’s a very good thing that they do because leaving it to chance and good luck, is not an option.
I’m betting they didn’t tell Joe and the rats about this one
Huge AMEN to your post!!!!!!!!!!!
This looks largely like crap to me.
Learn about nuclear weapons.
The vast majority are plutonium sourced. You make plutonium in reactors via the neutrons shed by U235. The standard plutonium device fuel is Pu-239 and you can find that in spent U235 fuel rods from reactors.
But the PU239 will have Pu240 and other isotopes in it. It is enormously radioactive, shedding enormous numbers of neutrons.
You do not bomb such a place. You will contaminate everything, and every civilian nuclear forensics facility will know it and announce it, from all countries.
The article said it was a super duper secret facility for developing explosives (presumably intended to create the implosion around the PU239). Well, you don’t need such a facility. Those are conventional explosives and are nearly off the shelf.
The whole story looks bogus.
Good job.
Cool.
bkmk
To continue from post 13:
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
At 1:20 a.m. on October 26, 1985, Doc's dog, Einstein, becomes the world's first time traveler leaving behind a pair of fire trails after the DeLorean accelerated to the necessary 88 miles per hour.During the experiment, Doc showed Marty how the keypad and display works, inputting famous dates of the birth of Jesus Christ, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or 1955, when the concept for the flux capacitor was discovered.
Doc then became nostalgic and imagined how much land could change in 30 years, recalling a time when the mall was nothing but open fields. He remembered how Old Man Peabody used to own the land on which the mall sat in 1985, as well as noting that Peabody bred pine trees as a hobby.
It's critical that this type of information doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
I don’t think you’re entirely correct. Either isotope of Pu is not crazy radioactive. Pu 239 and Pu 240 are potent alpha emitters, for sure. Some Pu isotopes are also beta emitters.
If the referenced facility is for explosive research, most likely the focus is on creating the explosive lenses, a tough technical challenge. Yes, the explosives are fairly conventional, but casting, layering, and machining them is very tricky. The actual amounts of Pu is such a facility is probably very low. And bombing is not going turn it into dust: the truly dangerous form.
I’ll fully acknowledge that anything we know about Iran’s nuclear program, other than they are undoubtedly proceeding with it, is at the end of a long information pipe and normal news sources, even better ones, are probably not accurate.
But the Israelis, also undoubtedly, regard this whole issue as existential. If the choice is to allow Iran to produce nukes versus contaminating an area of desert, that’s an easy choice for the Israelis.
The issue isn’t the lesser of threats, contamination vs risking bombs.
The issue is this is detectable 1000s of miles away. It would be known what Israel did.
Beyond all this, in a general sense, the odds the Iranians already have nukes would seem 90% or higher. The details are well known. And they have reactors. It’s not 1000s of days of centrifuge anymore. It’s have a reactor, extract the rods and then figure out how to purify the PU239 from all the other isotopes.
Frankly, for any state actor that has reactors, this is only slightly more challenging than trivial if you have 10+ yrs to deal with shielding during the purification process.
This is why Ukraine doesn’t have any, and why Iran does. They have had the time, and far, far more money than Ukraine. Oil and gas are everything.
You would think the mullahs would have been more suspicious of Ayatollah Weinstein, but apparently not.
So sad, mossad.
Nuclear disarmament - the frontier method
Make that: Formerly Top Secret, and Formerly Operational !
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