New satellite images show continuing work at Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment plant, which was struck by US B-2 bombers just over a week ago.
The imagery was collected by Maxar Technologies on Sunday. Maxar said it “reveals ongoing activity at and near the ventilation shafts and holes caused by last week’s airstrikes on the Fordow fuel enrichment complex.”
The pictures show “an excavator and several personnel are positioned immediately next to the northern shaft on the ridge above the underground complex. The crane appears to be operating at the entrance to the shaft/hole.”
According to Maxar, several additional vehicles are also seen below the ridge and are parked along the path that was built to access the site.
Earlier this month, American B-2 bombers dropped more than a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites, while Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine hit theIsfahan sitein central Iran.
The US Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs targeted the two ventilation shafts at Fordow, according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.
He told a Pentagon briefing last week that most of the bombs dropped at Fordow “were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space.”
Former nuclear inspector David Albright, who now leads the Institute for Science and International Security, said that imagery from Fordow on Saturday showed “the Iranians are actively working at the two MOP impact sites penetrating the ventilation shafts” at the plant.
Albright assessed that the activity “may include backfilling the craters, as well as conducting engineering damage assessments and likely radiological sampling. The craters above the main shafts remain open.”
“We have observed that the Iranians have also rapidly repaired the bomb cratering damage on the main entrance road from only a few days prior. However, there are yet no indications of any efforts to reopen any of the tunnel entrances,” Albrightposted on X.
On Sunday, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said US strikes on Iranfell short of causing total damageto its nuclear program and that Tehran could restart enriching uranium “in a matter of months,” contradicting President Donald Trump’s claims the US set Tehran’s ambitions back by decades.
The comments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi appear to support an early assessment from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency,first reported on by CNN, which suggests the United States’ strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites last week did not destroy the core components of its nuclear program, and likely only set it back by months.
While the final military and intelligence assessment has yet to come, Trump has repeatedly claimed to have “completely and totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program.
CNN’s Laura Sharman and Sophie Tanno contributed to this report.