Israel’s race to kill Iran’s nuclear dream

The key question, however, is how much damage Israel has inflicted on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure

ISRAEL’S WAR on Iran is now in its fifth day. Militarily, Iran is on its knees. Israel has wiped out much of the country’s senior military leadership and its air defences. Israeli aircraft are conducting daylight raids over Tehran, the capital. On June 16th the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that they had destroyed more than 120 of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers, about a third of the total. Iran is still firing ballistic missiles at Israel, and these are killing Israelis. But the salvoes are less serious than those seen in the clashes between Israel and Iran in April and October last year, and they have been getting smaller. The IDF also said it had destroyed the headquarters of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran Israel war news live updates: Israeli air defence systems are activated to intercept Iranian missiles over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv early on June 18, 2025.(AFP)

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The key question, however, is how much damage Israel has inflicted on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, ostensibly the main aim of this war, along with destroying Iran’s conventional missile force. Israel has attacked facilities at Natanz, where Iran has an underground enrichment plant consisting of centrifuges that spin uranium gas to separate out the particular isotope needed to build a nuclear bomb. Israel appears to have bombed Natanz’s power supply and generators. That will almost certainly have damaged the centrifuges, which are not supposed to come to an abrupt stop.

Olli Heinonen, a former UN weapons inspector, points out that shockwaves from bombing and any interruption of water for cooling or of electronic-control systems can also cause the machines to crack. He reckons that it would take Iran “years” to recover from such damage. On June 16th Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog, suggested that all 14,000 centrifuges at the site were “severely damaged if not destroyed altogether”.

Enriching uranium in centrifuges is just one part of the weaponisation process. First uranium needs to be turned into a gaseous form (usually uranium hexafluoride) that can be enriched. After enrichment it has to be converted back into metal that will be used in the core of a bomb. On the first day of the war Israel bombed two facilities in Isfahan that did this last step, the fuel plate fabrication plant and the uranium-conversion facility. To turn this metal into a usable weapon, explosives are fashioned around the core to make it implode. Israel has bombed a site at Parchin that was used for simulating the implosion—following up on a strike on the same site last year.

Iran depends on scientists who understand weaponisation. Israel has killed at least 14 of them, as well as many of the senior officials who oversaw their work, according to press reports citing Israeli officials. Israel has also bombed the headquarters of the SPND, the organisation that led Iran’s post-2003 nuclear-related work, in Tehran. And it has attacked several other sites in the capital, including those that allegedly made chemicals and “unique components” needed for a bomb.

All of this is a significant setback to Iran’s nuclear programme. But there is a catch. Iran’s most important enrichment facility, buried under a mountain at Fordow, near the city of Qom, appears to be unscathed. Iranian officials have said it was attacked, but the IAEA says that there is no sign of damage. The facility is so deeply buried that Israel would struggle to destroy its underground halls with conventional bombs, though it might attempt to destroy it from within by putting troops on the ground if Iranian defences in the area can be softened up enough. On top of that, there is also no sign that Israel has attacked another, more recent, and perhaps even more deeply buried facility south of Natanz, known as Mt Kolang Gaz La.

The events of the past four days raise an important question: could Iran now dash for a bomb? Iran says it had moved equipment and nuclear material out of Natanz before it was hit. “We now have a major problem,” notes Ian Stewart, an expert at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies. “We don’t know where Iran’s enriched material is.” The country has enough 60%-enriched uranium for ten bombs. In theory, Iran could use centrifuges at Fordow to enrich this to 90%—weapons-grade—in three days. If it judged that it was too risky to do this at a known site, it could attempt the process elsewhere. “Iran could also set up a smaller number of [centrifuge] machines in a shed somewhere,” says Mr Stewart, and do the job in a few weeks. On June 14th Iran said it was no longer co-operating with the IAEA “as before”, and would not tell the agency of “new and special measures to protect nuclear materials and equipment”.

The idea that Iran can build a bomb quickly while under bombardment assumes four things, however. One is that it is in a position to move centrifuges and nuclear material around the country in secret. Israel has demonstrated a remarkable level of intelligence penetration of Iran, so this cannot be taken for granted. Israeli officers say that they are confident that they know where the highly-enriched uranium (HEU) stockpile is located.

The second is that Iran has enough leadership and expertise left to complete the weaponisation process. Yet managers and scientists involved in the weapons effort might well be keeping their distance from the project for the moment.

Third is whether Iran still has all the facilities needed. Unless it has covert facilities to convert uranium gas back into metal and to fabricate bomb cores, the destruction of these plants at Isfahan is probably the biggest check to weaponisation. Finally, Iran has to decide whether dashing for a bomb is the best way to deter Israel—perhaps from regime change—or whether that might in fact trigger American involvement in the war, causing far more lasting damage to Fordow and other sites.

Israeli military planners are relatively optimistic. They distinguish between two types of mission to degrade Iran’s nuclear programme. The first is aimed at preventing what they claim was the imminent threat of “weaponisation”. This, they say, has now been largely achieved by the strikes carried out so far against the SPND labs and offices, as well as the assassinations of the scientists. The second type of mission is aimed at setting the programme back by years. That would presumably include the destruction of the major enrichment sites and the elimination of the stockpile of HEU.

Those efforts probably lie in the days ahead. On June 15th Donald Trump indicated that he wanted Israel and Iran to cut a deal. But other sources tell The Economist that he remains open to the idea of intervening on the basis that it would be better to deal a long-lasting blow to Iran than to leave the job half-finished, resulting in an Iran that is wounded, angry and has continued access to nuclear material and fortified subterranean caverns. If Mr Trump were to join the fray it would enrage many of his MAGA supporters. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win,” he told the crowd at his inauguration on January 20th, “but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

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