NUCLEAR IRAN: A Primer on Iran’s Nuclear Program as More Than a Set of Targets
The Facilities have been Badly Damaged. The Knowledge, Enriched Material, and Coercive Strategy Remain
Hamlet Yousef
An open source assessment current through July 25, 2026 (full citations at the end)
Bias Alert: As an Iranian-born immigrant to the U.S. after the Islamic Revolution, I have long detested the current hardline regime and viewed it as a significant threat to both the West and the Iranian people. I have consistently believed that U.S./Western Iran policy has been flawed and misguided for decades, spanning multiple administrations from across the political spectrum. Addressing the Iranian nuclear issue requires not only identifying and addressing the structure of the program but also confronting the individuals who remain in charge of the country and represent the hardline regime. This faction, while small, is unfortunately deeply entrenched within Iranian economic, political, military, and clerical elite. It should be viewed as a deeply impeded cancer that will be challenging to eradicate.
BLUF
Iran has mastered much of the science and engineering required to operate an indigenous uranium enrichment program. Bombing can destroy machinery and buy time, but it cannot erase that knowledge.
The warning was never Iran’s ability to make ordinary reactor fuel. It was the regime’s choice to enrich uranium to 60 percent, reduce monitoring, preserve weapons relevant research, and move sensitive capabilities underground.
Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer appear to have rendered Natanz and Fordow inoperable and badly damaged Isfahan’s conversion infrastructure. Operation Epic Fury then struck surviving research, weaponization, uranium supply, and reconstruction assets. Operation Economic Fury has targeted the money and procurement networks needed to rebuild.
The biggest unresolved questions are the location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, the condition of underground storage at Isfahan, surviving personnel and equipment, and the status of Pickaxe Mountain.
The larger threat is political. A regime that already uses missiles, proxies, maritime disruption, and economic warfare to hold global commerce at risk would become more dangerous under a nuclear shield.
Executive summary
Iran’s nuclear challenge is larger than Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. The hardliner Iranian regime has built a national ecosystem of mines, conversion plants, enrichment facilities, centrifuge manufacturing, military laboratories, university talent, front companies, procurement networks, and missiles.
The key dividing line is enrichment. Commercial reactors generally use uranium enriched below 5 percent. Iran later moved to 20 percent and then 60 percent. By May 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that it held 408.6 kilograms of 60 percent material. That was not a bomb, and public U.S. intelligence had not confirmed a final decision to build one, but the stockpile sharply shortened the remaining path to weapons grade uranium. (Congress.gov)
Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer caused enormous physical damage and appear to have stopped declared enrichment. Operation Epic Fury then hit parts of the broader weapons support and reconstruction network, while Operation Economic Fury targeted the financial and procurement systems needed to rebuild. Yet the enriched uranium account remains incomplete, underground storage at Isfahan is uncertain, and Pickaxe Mountain remains uninspected. [3][4][5][6][7] (ISIS)
The policy problem is therefore larger than destroying the next tunnel. Tehran has already used missiles, proxies, maritime disruption, and threats to infrastructure to impose global costs. Nuclear weapons would not replace that strategy. They would protect and amplify it.
Enrichment tells us more than the regime’s rhetoric
The Iran people are entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to peaceful nuclear technology under international safeguards. Meanwhile the Iranian regime has also demonstrated that it can produce low enriched uranium suitable for civilian purposes. The issue is not whether Iranian scientists are competent or whether Iran can operate medical, research, or power programs. It can.
The issue is what the hardline regime chose to do once it mastered the basics.
Natural uranium contains only a small percentage of uranium 235. Centrifuges increase that concentration. Ordinary reactor fuel is generally enriched below 5 percent. Research reactor fuel can approach 20 percent. Weapons grade uranium is generally associated with enrichment near 90 percent. The process is not linear. Once uranium reaches 60 percent, most of the difficult enrichment work has already been completed. (Congress.gov)
Iran resumed 20 percent enrichment at Fordow in 2021, began 60 percent production at Natanz later that year, and expanded 60 percent production to Fordow in 2022. Inspectors later found particles enriched to 83.7 percent at Fordow. The IAEA accepted that Iran’s explanation was not inconsistent with an unintended fluctuation, but inspectors also found that centrifuges had been configured differently than Iran declared. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Sixty percent enrichment was not needed for Bushehr or for conventional civilian electricity generation. It created a threshold capability and reduced breakout time. At the same time, Iran restricted monitoring, failed to resolve questions about undeclared nuclear material, expanded advanced centrifuge work, and hardened sensitive facilities underground. (Congress.gov)
A careful assessment must still separate capability from an assembled weapon. The Congressional Research Service noted that public U.S. intelligence continued to assess that Iran halted its structured weapons program in 2003 and had not confirmed a final decision to build a bomb. Iran also faced remaining work involving weapon design, detonation systems, uranium metallurgy, and integration into a delivery system. (Congress.gov)
But a state does not need a completed bomb to gain leverage from standing close to one. Iran built a threshold posture: enough material, expertise, protected infrastructure, and weapons relevant research to make a final political decision increasingly dangerous.
The program is an ecosystem, not three facilities
Bushehr matters because not every Iranian nuclear site should be treated as part of a weapons program. The greatest concern has centered on domestic enrichment, undeclared material, uranium metal work, restricted inspections, military research, and the relationship between SPND and the earlier Amad Plan. NTI, UANI, Arms Control Association, and IAEA reporting describe a program spread across more than a dozen facilities and multiple state institutions. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Four locations became central to the IAEA safeguards investigation: Lavisan Shian, Varamin, Marivan, and Turquzabad. The agency concluded that undeclared nuclear material or activities had occurred and that Iran had not provided technically credible explanations for all outstanding questions. In June 2025, the IAEA Board found Iran in breach of its safeguards obligations for the first time in two decades. (Congress.gov)
At the center of the weapons concern is the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known as SPND. The U.S. Treasury describes SPND as connected to Iran’s previous nuclear weapons effort and sanctioned 14 individuals and 17 entities linked to it in 2019. UANI describes it as the successor to important parts of the Amad Plan and cites U.S. reporting that it employed as many as 1,500 people engaged in dual use research with possible nuclear weapons applications. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
UANI is an advocacy organization with a clear policy position. Its extensive entity mapping is valuable, but its claims are strongest when checked against IAEA reporting, Treasury records, congressional analysis, and independent satellite imagery.
Universities and companies that supported the network
Iran dispersed sensitive expertise through universities, military research institutes, contractors, and firms that appeared commercial but worked for the nuclear or defense establishment. Naming an institution does not implicate its entire faculty or student body. The reported links usually involve particular laboratories, administrators, scientists, or contracts.
Malek Ashtar University of Technology has some of the clearest reported ties to the Amad Plan and later defense research, including links to the nearby Mojdeh or Lavisan 2 SPND campus. A research building associated with the university was destroyed during the 2026 conflict. Imam Hussein University, an IRGC institution, has conducted work in physics, missiles, explosives, and military technology; a physics center and underground research complex were struck during Epic Fury. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Shahid Beheshti University was associated with several nuclear scientists. Islamic Azad University was led by Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, killed during Rising Lion. The University of Tehran hosts the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, which has legitimate research functions but also supported centrifuge component work. Sharif and Amirkabiruniversities have appeared in reporting concerning laboratories or individual researchers tied to nuclear and defense programs. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Key industrial entities include TESA or TABA Karaj, which manufactured centrifuge components; Kalaye Electric, a centrifuge research and testing site; Farayand Technique and Pars Trash, linked to centrifuge work; and Paradise Medical Pioneers and Kimia Part Sivan, described by Treasury as SPND cover or support companies. DamavandTecwas later sanctioned after reporting linked it to efforts to obtain sensitive dual use technology in Russia. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
This dispersed structure can train replacements, create new fronts, move equipment, and conceal sensitive work inside institutions with legitimate civilian functions.
What the military and economic campaigns degraded
Operation Rising Lion began on June 13, 2025. Israel attacked nuclear infrastructure, air defenses, missile forces, senior commanders, and scientists. Operation Midnight Hammer followed on June 22, when the United States struck Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.(ISIS)
At Natanz, attacks destroyed the aboveground pilot enrichment plant, power infrastructure, support systems, and parts of the underground complex. Loss of power and cooling also threatened thousands of spinning centrifuges. Later U.S. strikes targeted the underground halls. Imagery indicates that enrichment stopped and had not resumed by mid 2026.(ISIS)
At Fordow, U.S. penetrator weapons targeted the deeply buried enrichment halls. The Pentagon called the strike a historic success. Independent analysts were more cautious but still assessed that the plant was likely inoperable, with no clear return to underground access or operation.(U.S. Department of War)
At Isfahan, strikes damaged uranium conversion, fuel related plants, uranium metal capability, laboratories, and entrances to underground storage. This was a major blow because conversion produces the uranium hexafluoride gas used in centrifuges, while uranium metal capability is relevant to a potential weapon core. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Other targets included the Arak reactor and heavy water complex, TESA Karaj, a centrifuge component building at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, Kalaye Electric, Mojdeh or Lavisan 2, Sanjarian, and the Shahid Meysami Research Center. The campaign attacked the chain from centrifuge production and enrichment to explosives research, diagnostics, and leadership. (ISIS)
The strongest open source conclusion is that Iran’s declared enrichment capability was severely degraded. The weakest part is the material account. Iran possessed more than 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium. Some may remain at damaged sites, some may be in Isfahan’s tunnels, and some may have been moved. The IAEA lacks the access required for a complete inventory. (Congress.gov)
Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026 as a broader campaign against Iran’s security and military apparatus. Independent imagery analysis identified at least six nuclear sites attacked and three more that may have been nuclear related. Reported targets included Min Zadayi, Taleghan 2, facilities associated with Malek Ashtar and Imam Hussein universities, the Shahid Chamran Group complex, the Ardakan yellowcake plant, and additional infrastructure at Arak, Natanz, Mojdeh, and Shahid Meysami. (ISIS)
Public reporting also indicates that Hossein Jabal Amelian, the serving head of SPND, and Reza Mozaffari Nia, a former head, were killed. Ali Shamkhani, linked in public analysis to oversight during the Amad era, was also killed. (ISIS)
Economic Fury attacks the reconstruction side. Treasury actions targeted shadow banks, currency exchanges, oil sales, tankers, shipping firms, digital asset exchanges, procurement agents, and suppliers of dual use components. Treasury also sanctioned Iran’s so called Persian Gulf Strait Authority as an IRGC effort to extort shipping in Hormuz. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
Sanctions do not destroy centrifuges. They make replacement slower, costlier, and more visible, particularly when paired with export enforcement, intelligence, and interdiction.
Operation Narnia and the people behind the program
Operation Narnia was the reported Israeli effort to kill scientists and managers who held the program’s most sensitive practical knowledge. A Washington Post and PBS Frontline investigation said Israeli analysts began with roughly 100 scientists and narrowed the list to about a dozen. It also documented significant civilian casualties around several strikes, a necessary caution against accepting every claim of surgical precision. (The Washington Post)
The IDF said nine senior scientists were killed in the opening attack: Fereydoun Abbasi, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, Akbar Motalebi Zadeh, Saeed Barji, Amir Hassan Fakhahi, Abdolhamid Minouchehr, Mansour Asgari, Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari Daryani, and Ali Bakhouei Katirimi. Independent analysis later counted 11 scientists killed during the 12 Day War and linked many to SPND or the Amad network. (IDF)
The target was experience, not textbook physics. Senior scientists know which experiments failed, which suppliers are reliable, how teams are compartmented, and how theory becomes a manufacturable system.
The best known figure remains Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, often called the “Oppenheimer of Iran.” He led the Amad Plan and later SPND, preserving personnel and research after the structured weapons effort was reorganized. He was assassinated in 2020. His real importance was institutional: he helped build a system designed to survive sanctions, sabotage, and leadership losses. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
The personnel losses may delay specialized work for years, but Iran still has thousands of trained engineers and scientists. They degrade and disorganize the network. They do not guarantee that a successor will not emerge.
Pickaxe Mountain is the unanswered question
Pickaxe Mountain, known as Kuh e Kolang Gaz La, is an underground complex directly south of Natanz. Construction accelerated after sabotage damaged Iran’s aboveground centrifuge assembly plant in 2020. Satellite imagery has shown multiple tunnel portals, large excavation spoil, hardened entrances, security walls, and continuing work. (United Against Nuclear Iran)
Its original reported purpose was to replace exposed centrifuge assembly capability with a protected underground plant. That alone makes it strategically important. Centrifuges are the machinery Iran would need to restore enrichment at Natanz, Fordow, or a new clandestine site.
What is inside is not publicly known. Israeli reporting has suggested that centrifuges were moved into the mountain. President Trump has said the United States is watching the site and has threatened to strike it. Recent reporting by TIME, Deutsche Welle, and other outlets has pushed Pickaxe back to the center of the nuclear debate. Those claims have not been independently verified, and the IAEA has not inspected the complex. (ISIS)
The Institute for Science and International Security offered a more cautious assessment on July 14, 2026. Based on imagery, it judged that the complex remained under construction and was not clearly operational. It also said the site had not been directly attacked during the 2025 or 2026 campaigns. (ISIS)
The correct conclusion is measured: Pickaxe is not publicly proven to be an operating enrichment or weapons plant, but it is a major reconstitution risk. It may preserve centrifuge manufacturing, store surviving equipment, or eventually support undeclared enrichment. Any agreement that covers Natanz and Fordow while leaving Pickaxe off limits would not solve the problem.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia show another path
The United Arab Emirates offers the clearest regional contrast. Barakah has four operating APR 1400 reactors, all in commercial service by September 2024. The IAEA reports a combined capacity of 5,348 megawatts and about 22 percent of UAE electricity production in 2025. (IAEA CNPP)
The UAE built its program through international cooperation, accepted comprehensive safeguards and an Additional Protocol, and committed in its U.S. nuclear agreement not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel domestically. It gained electricity, technical training, and global investment without accumulating 60 percent enriched uranium or building an undeclared enrichment network. (IAEA CNPP)
The new U.S. and Saudi engagement could become a second model, but it requires scrutiny. On July 22, 2026, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement and a bilateral safeguards agreement. The Department of Energy described a decades long, multibillion dollar partnership focused on safety, security, nonproliferation, and U.S. industry. Congress will review the arrangement. (The Department of Energy’s Energy.gov)
Al Jazeera and other reporting correctly note that important details remain unclear, particularly concerning possible domestic enrichment and safeguards enforcement. The UAE model is proven. The Saudi model is still being tested. (Al Jazeera)
Still, the strategic message to the Iranian people is powerful. Nuclear science does not require isolation. A country can pursue energy, skilled jobs, investment, and international integration while accepting real limits and intrusive monitoring.
Iran’s people are not being denied scientific progress because they are Iranian. They are paying the price for a hardline regime that converted a potentially peaceful program into an instrument of strategic ambiguity and coercion.
The JCPOA mistook a nuclear transaction for a strategic settlement
The JCPOA temporarily reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, limited centrifuge operations, altered the Arak reactor project, and expanded international monitoring. Those were meaningful technical achievements. Its central weakness, however, was that it treated the nuclear program as a compartmentalized arms control problem rather than one element of a broader revolutionary strategy. The agreement provided substantial sanctions relief without resolving Iran’s missile development, proxy warfare, hostage diplomacy, maritime coercion, domestic repression, or support for armed groups. Its temporary restrictions and weak missile language allowed Tehran to accept short term constraints without abandoning the ideology or regional ambitions that created the crisis. [27][28][30] (FAQ - US Congress) (United Against Nuclear Iran - JCPOA Analysis)
Any future engagement must account for the character of the current leadership. Iran’s hardline system combines strategic patience and a strong instinct for regime survival with a revolutionary culture that celebrates resistance, sacrifice, and martyrdom. This does not mean every Iranian official is irrational or seeks national destruction. It means the regime has repeatedly shown a willingness to impose extraordinary costs on the Iranian people, tolerate military and economic losses, and prolong confrontation when hardliners believe doing so protects the Islamic Republic or advances its regional mission. A conventional agreement built on expectations of gradual normalization is unlikely to produce durable peace unless it addresses undeclared facilities, enriched uranium, weaponization research, Pickaxe Mountain, missiles, proxy forces, procurement networks, and maritime disruption. Sanctions relief should therefore be phased, reversible, and tied to verified behavior rather than promises or arbitrary expiration dates.
The UAE, and potentially Saudi Arabia, demonstrate that peaceful nuclear energy is possible in the Middle East. The UAE operates four safeguarded commercial reactors without domestic enrichment or a parallel military research network. The emerging U.S. and Saudi nuclear partnership could offer another route based on energy production, international investment, skilled employment, and integration, although its safeguards will require close scrutiny. The message to the Iranian people should be clear: Iran is not being denied nuclear science because it is Iranian. Nuclear energy for peace is possible, but threshold nuclear weapons capabilities cannot be accepted in the hands of a regime that uses proxy warfare, ideological confrontation, and threats to global commerce as permanent tools of statecraft. (U.S. Dept of Energy) (IAEA - UAE Program)
Maritime coercion is already a weapon of mass disruption
The fear of a nuclear armed Iran is not limited to the possibility of a nuclear strike. The more immediate question is how Tehran would behave if it believed a nuclear capability protected it from conventional retaliation.
The Strait of Hormuz offers a preview. Iran has threatened shipping and used the vulnerability of a global energy chokepoint to impose costs on countries far from the battlefield. The 2026 conflict and disruption of the Strait sent shocks through oil markets, insurance, shipping, and global growth expectations. Treasury described the Persian Gulf Strait Authority as an attempt to turn maritime intimidation into revenue for the IRGC. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
Iran does not need to sink every tanker. It only needs to make transit uncertain enough that insurers raise premiums, shippers delay voyages, energy markets price in scarcity, and political leaders begin calculating the domestic cost of continued confrontation.
This is a weapon of mass disruption. A nuclear shield could make it more dangerous by convincing Tehran that missiles, proxies, cyber operations, hostage diplomacy, and maritime coercion can be expanded with less fear of retaliation. That is why Iran’s neighbors may fear an Iranian bomb more acutely than distant Western governments. They would live under its shadow every day. (Council on Foreign Relations)
Can this regime make peace?
Operation Epic Fury and Operation Economic Fury have not been publicly framed as traditional regime change campaigns. Their stated focus has been degrading the military, missile, nuclear, financial, and security capabilities threatening the United States and its partners. (Central Command)
But a nuclear agreement cannot by itself change a regime’s worldview. If the hardline leadership continues to define survival through proxy warfare, missile intimidation, concealed research, repression, hostage diplomacy, and threats to global commerce, even a technically strong agreement may become another pause rather than a peace.
A credible settlement would require a complete uranium account, restored IAEA access, inspection of Pickaxe and other protected facilities, enforceable enrichment limits, disclosure of weapons relevant research, and rapid consequences for renewed concealment. It would also have to address missiles, proxies, and maritime coercion because the nuclear program is part of a larger strategy.
The strikes have bought time and imposed extraordinary damage. They have not erased the knowledge or answered whether the regime is prepared to live as a normal state.
The UAE shows that nuclear energy and international integration are compatible. The Saudi engagement may offer another path if its safeguards are strong. The harder conclusion is that Iran’s current hardline system may not want that future. So long as its power depends on controlled crisis and regional disruption, the world will keep confronting new tunnels, front companies, and threats to trade.
The next strike may destroy another facility. Durable peace requires changing the strategic calculation that keeps rebuilding it.
Sources and further reading
United Against Nuclear Iran - Iran’s Nuclear Program Overview (pdf)
United Against Nuclear Iran - JCPOA Sunset Alert: Missile Restrictions
Nuclear Threat Initiative - Iran Nuclear Program (interactive map)
Carnegie Endowment - Iran Will Probably Still Get Nukes – Here’s How (YouTube)
AiTelly - How Iran Enriched Nuclear Weapons after US bombardment? (YouTube)
AiTelly - Why Pickaxe Mountain is US’s Military Nightmare? (YouTube)
Recent reporting and visual context:
United Against Nuclear Iran (leading think tank focused on Iran’s Nuclear Program)
Table of Iranian Nuclear Sites and Related Facilities (Iran Watch.org)
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