The United States on Thursday targeted Iran’s secretive Taleghan-2 nuclear program site in the country’s secure Parchin military complex, a Clash Monitor report based on fresh satellite imagery stated.
While Iran never explicitly acknowledged Taleghan to be a nuclear weapons program site, the IAEA’s November 2011 report identified it as the location of hydrodynamic experiments consistent with nuclear weapon development.
The report had revealed that the military base was being used for high-explosive testing for implosion-type nuclear initiators, the component that compresses fissile material to achieve critical mass.
US, Israel Drop Largest Non-Nuclear Bombs To Target Taleghan: Reports
While neither the Pentagon nor the Israeli military has explicitly identified the explosives used in decimating Taleghan, analysis of satellite imagery from Maxar and Planet Labs by researchers showed it to be consistent with the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb designed to penetrate up to 200 feet of hardened concrete.
These bunker-buster bombs were reportedly delivered by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
Why Parchin Is Important For Iran?
Experts have warned that US targeting of Iran’s core nuclear site can have potentially significant consequences for the region.
The Parchin site had been hidden from the international community before it was exposed by Israel in 2018 as an integral part of Iran’s Amad program.
In 2018, Israel disclosed roughly 55,000 pages of documents from Iran’s AMAD Plan archive that detailed the role of the Parchin facility.
During its only inspection of the specific site in September 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) detected chemically processed uranium particles.
Iran subsequently blocked further access and carried out cleanup activities that the agency said had “undermined verification”.
What It Means For US-Iran War On Day 13?
Experts have warned that the Parchin-Taleghan attack could spook Iran, which remained on its toes given the simultaneous attacks by the US and its allies.
“Iran’s response calculus just changed. Before Parchin, the war was about sovereignty, oil, and regional power,” geopolitical expert Shanaka Anslem Perera wrote on X.
“After Parchin, the war is about whether Iran still possesses the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. A regime under existential bombardment that believes its nuclear option has been destroyed has two choices: surrender or accelerate,” Anslem added.
