Originally Posted by
Recc
Let's assume (for the sake of argument) that US intel can track every vehicle movement in Iran with 100% accuracy. Now consider that the Iranians move all of their 400kg of HEU in 1 vehicle movement and the US know exactly which day this will occur. They observe 50 vehicle movements at the Fordow facility on that day and each of these vehicles moves to a logistics hub/ warehouse. There are a further 50 vehicle movements from each of these hubs each going to a final location. That is now 2500 possible locations for your HEU on day 1! Now consider that 50% of these secondary movements are also to hubs, and that vehicle movements follow the same pattern the next day. By the end of day 2, you have ~63k possible locations and by day 3 you are close to 1M. If you target trucks as they leave the facility, that might be doable with an airstrike. Otherwise, you will need additional sources of intelligence.
In reality, the HEU will be widely dispersed with multiple dummy containers and a very few people who know which is which. Logistically it is much easier to store HEU out of the reach of US and Israeli weapons than it is to do the same with a processing facility. I have no doubt that Israeli intelligence capabilities in Iran are exceptionally good but I very much doubt that they (or the US) have the capability to target Iranian HEU inventory with airpower alone.
Edit: This should not be a surprise to anybody who has posted a letter. Imagine claiming that because you saw me post a letter, and you could log movements of every postal truck, that you would be able to tell who I had sent it to without seeing the envelope!
If - the only surveillance device in play is continuous aerial / space imagery with video replay, then the maths appear correct, i.e. 1 million locations after 3 days.
But if
- the road/transport network has some 24x365 localisers on it that can detect a certain amount of radiological signatures, then that allows specific vehicles to be associated with the corresponding cargo. If those localisers are suitably placed on the transport network then one could keep the location-tracking live and vehicle-specific to at least city-level or tween-city level. Also it would tend to weed out quite a lot of decoy transport activity.
And if
- the electrical grid is similarly 24x365 monitored for all main sections then one can detect (and localise) any unusual long term loads, such as would be caused by operating a centrifuge cascade for uranium gas enrichment.
But if the uranium is metallic and of the requisite enrichment (~90% minimum*) then the opportunities for electrical signature detection - and requirements for associated large cascade hall facility** become much lesser. Once at the enriched metallic stage just a small machine shop with some glove boxes etc will do in extremis. Far easier to disperse.
The Iranian effort would appear to have at a comparable scale to the Korean effort in centrifuge numbers ***. Iran 20,000 vs Korea 12-15,000.
From a timing perspective this does appear to have been the last possible moment to intervene whilst still viable to do so.
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
**
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...086281302.html
***
https://isis-online.org/isis-reports...ear-facilities