Media: Tehran digs new tunnel network for nuclear facility

Israeli and American intelligence officials have been watching each day as Iran digs a vast tunnel network just south of the Natanz nuclear production site in what they believe is Tehran’s biggest effort yet to construct new nuclear facilities so deep in the mountains that they can withstand bunker-busting bombs and cyberattacks, Report informs, citing New York Times.

Though the construction is evident on satellite photographs and has been monitored by groups that track the proliferation of new nuclear facilities, Biden administration officials have never talked about it in public, and Israel’s defense minister has mentioned it just once, in a single sentence in a speech last month.

But as President Biden prepares for his first trip as president to the Middle East next month — one that will take him to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s two biggest regional rivals — there is little debate that the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is about to flare again.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this month that the country is just weeks away from being able to enrich enough bomb-grade fuel to make a single nuclear bomb — though fashioning that into a usable weapon could take at least another two years, even by the most alarmist Israeli estimates.

Over the past week, Iranian authorities have switched off 27 cameras that gave inspectors a view into Iran’s production of fuel. The decision to cut off the cameras, which were installed as part of the nuclear deal, was particularly worrisome to Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations agency responsible for nuclear inspections.