New satellite images of Iran’s Fordo Nuclear Facility show that Iran has opened up the gates, and added new construction to its nuclear weapons plant. Fordo is dug deep into a mountain and thought to be resistant to air strikes. There is no reason to expand the site unless Iran had a bomb-making program.
In 2017, right after the JCPOA was agreed to, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization Of Iran (AEOI) and a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, bragged about the concessions Iran received for the Fordo nuclear facility.
“[We] regard the maintaining of the Fordo facilities as a point of strength in the JCPOA, whereas they [the U.S. and EU3] did not even want the Fordo [facility to] exist and said we had to shut it down. [Newspaper and television] reporters are supposed to visit the various areas of this [Fordo] facility. If you have archive photos [of it], you can see how much the facility has changed and what activities are taking place, especially in the field of stable isotopes and in the various labs. We maintained Fordo in the JCPOA so that if we want, we can start enriching [uranium] to 20% within five days.”
Satellite photos, provided by ImageSat International (ISI) reveal that the entrance gate to the Fordo (or Fordow) uranium enrichment facility was opened and there seems to be much activity, including new buildings, along with buses and other vehicles parked outside the Fordo complex.
The pictures (below) were taken on Sunday, April 29th, and released on Thursday, May 3rd. Based on the construction, the work had to start weeks (or months) before the Netanyahu speech on April 30th. The comparison images were taken in July 2016.
Now after looking at the above pictures, are the naysayers still convinced Iran is meeting its obligations under the JCPOA..or do you at least have some doubts?