- if the Iranians were not motivated to have nuclear devices before, they certainly will be now (imho);
Originally Posted by
tartare
Even if the centrifuge halls themselves weren't breached, I wonder what sort of damage would have been done to the centrifuges themselves purely from shockwaves?
These are precision pieces of machinery after all.
- quite likely the better centrifuges were moved out of Fordow pre-strike;
- ditto it is thought that the bulk of the enriched uranium (~400 kg of 60% U-235) is at the Isfahan storage tunnels;
- setting up a centrifuge cascade in a new location is fairly simple, but the set-up activity and the operational activity will be observable;
- following the people is surely within the capabailities of the intel assets;
- observing the electrical consumption is a key indicator for the cascade train operation, hard to hide that - many previous strikes have been on the elecltrical supplies, especially the longer lead lumps;
- (earth fill in Fordow tunnel entrances most likely was an attempt by Iran to create better post-strike situation, i.e. reduced collapse);
>>> so the Fordow strike may be intended to flush the assets (human and machinery) into the open where they can be more easily targetted in the next iteration
- (~400 kg of 60% U-235) enough for say 10 devices if further enriched
- Khoramshahr (Kheibar) ballistic missile[2] offers a range of 2,000 km and can carry a 1,500-kilogram warhead.[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorramshahr_(missile)
"This means Iran has retained 400 kg of 60% HEU, the ability to manufacture centrifuges, and one, possibly two underground enrichment sites. That is also to say nothing of possible secret sites, ·
"Let's say Iran decides to rush a bomb. Iran can install ~1.5 cascades a week. In six weeks, it could have 9 cascades of IR-6 machines. It would take those machines about 60 days to enrich all 400 kg to WGU. Altogether that's about five months"
>>> but to do that would mean running all the HEU through the centrifuges. Surely anyone with sense would only run batches through, and would keep the remainder well dispersed at other sites with plenty of bait-and-switch going on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy Take a read of the Little Boy specs and you can see that it would not take much ingenuity and access to modern technology to fit such a basic device - so basic it did not even require testing pre-Hiroshima - on to a Khorramshahr-4
- Israel is currently taking out Irania missile TEUs pre-launch in 15-minute cycles
- that has the launch rate down, it was about 30/day and seems to be only a few/day now
- at ~30/day the leakage rate was about 10%, hence the hits in Tel Aviv etc
- at 2 interceptors each it was quite likely the Iranian magazine (~3000 IRBMs) was deeper than the available Israeli/USA ABM interceptor magazine (unknown size)
>>> so if this had been a game of patience, Iran was holding the deeper cards, hence the desire by Israel to push things along and change the game;
- now Israel and/or USA needs to keep armed overwatch* 24x7 on Iran to
a) further degrade IRBM launch capability (and win time to rebuild interceptor magazine (regrettable for Ukraine**));
b) flush out those enrichment assets, prevent next cycle of enrichment for n viable devices;
c) try to change the nature of the game once again.
>>> hence all the talk about regime change
( * I wonder how good on-orbit radiation detection is these days, and how much shielding is required to defeat that. Human intel seems more plausible to me. Not a good time to be a spook in Iran).
(** Industrial production capabilities of interceptors really does need to ramp up to support Ukraine as well as Israel, ideally not just of the Patriot flavour)