by Yonah Jeremy Bob
Tehran may have used the delay in the US's potential strike to make the beneath-mountain facility nearly untouchable.
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High-resolution satellite imagery of Iran's largest and most crucial remaining nuclear facility shows a recent rush to protect it from potential American or Israeli aerial attack, according to the Institute for Science & International Security (ISIS).
Satellite imagery from February 10 appears to show that Tehran has taken advantage of delays in any such attack since the December 28 protests started to better defend the facility.
The facility in question is a large tunnel complex at Kolang-Gaz La Mountain, aka Pickaxe Mountain, a mountain near the series of Natanz nuclear facilities, which were the center of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program until the Israel-Iran War of June 2025.
Most of the other Natanz facilities, including the existing centrifuges at the time, were destroyed in June 2025, but for reasons that have not been fully explained to date, this facility was not struck.
Construction started at the site by 2021, and the ISIS think tank and The Jerusalem Post revealed its existence to the public in early 2022.
According to the think tank, the relatively new enormous underground facility is still not thought to be operational, one of the reasons it may not have been struck previously, but there are concerns that it could be used to enrich uranium or even for some kind of clandestine rush to a small nuclear weapon at some point if not dealt with.
Tehran continues to invest in its most important undamaged nuclear facility
Certainly, since June 2025, it has received extra attention and emphasis from Iran as its singularly most important undamaged facility for potential nuclear program use.
From the start, Iran had been digging and building this new facility near the Natanz area to go so deep under the mountain there, far larger than the mountain atop the Fordow facility, which the US bombed with bunker busters in June 2025, so that it would be even more impregnable.
The main mountain harboring the new Natanz tunnel complex is at a height of 1608 meters above sea level, he said.
In comparison, the mountain that harbored the Fordow centrifuge enrichment plant, called Kūh-e Dāgh Ghū’ī, was about 960 meters tall.
The think tank said this makes the Natanz mountain about 650 meters tall, or well over 50% taller, potentially providing even greater protection to any facility built beneath it.
All this was true, even before June 2025.
Heavy construction suggests facility is not yet ready for operations
In a previous report, the think tank's president David Albright wrote, “Fordow is already viewed as so deeply buried that it would be difficult to destroy via aerial attack. The new Natanz site may be even harder to destroy.”
The latest think tank report revealed that there are "ongoing efforts to harden and defensively strengthen two of the tunnel entrances into the facility. Imagery shows ongoing activity throughout the complex related to this effort, involving the movement of numerous vehicles, including dump trucks, cement mixers, and other heavy equipment like backhoes and truck-mounted cranes."
" As of February 10, concrete is being poured on top of the Western tunnel entrance extension. At one of the Eastern tunnel entrances, rock and soil can be seen pushed back and leveled on top of the tunnel portal. Additionally, over the last month, a concrete-reinforced headworks for the tunnel entrance extension was added. This allows for additional overburden in the form of additional rock, soil, or concrete," said the report.
Further, the report stated that, "These efforts strengthen the tunnel portals and provide additional protection against an airstrike. Nearby the eastern tunnel portals, piles of construction materials can be seen on the ground."
Next, the report explained that, "The ongoing presence of heavy construction machinery and materials around the site indicate that the facility is likely not yet ready for operations, however, over the last two months, smaller vehicles and closed-roof vehicles have also been observed near the entrances, indicating that Iran may be in the process of outfitting the interior of the tunnel complex."
Moreover, the report noted, "In the past, Iran has tied the construction to rebuilding an advanced centrifuge assembly plant, but the size of the facility, as well as the protection provided by the tall mountain, raised immediate concern about whether additional sensitive activities are planned, such as uranium enrichment. Whether the current levels of visible utility support in the form of one probable ventilation shaft with above-and below-ground power lines are sufficient to support such operations inside the tunnel seems doubtful."
Accordingly, Israel can hope that the facility may not be capable of all of the nuclear activities Iran lost when its main facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan were heavily damaged in June 2025.
But if Tehran is planning to expand the facility's capabilities, the last two months of work on its potential vulnerabilities have only made an already extremely difficult target even more difficult to hit.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-886464
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