Isfahan, the heart of the Iranian nuclear program to which Israel has sent a warning

Isfahan, the capital of the homonymous province in central Iran, was the capital of the Safavid empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. The beauty of its historic center embodies for many Iranians the lost splendor of ancient Persia. That symbolic place rooted in Iran's history is also now the country's main center for production, research and development of missiles and drones and the heart of its nuclear program. The province that was the scene of the Israeli attack this morning is not only home to the Shekari military air base, the country's main missile assembly complex, the Shahed-136 drone factory and a company that produces anti-aircraft weapons for the Ministry of Defense. It is also home to Iran's most important nuclear research complex - the Isfahan nuclear technology center - and the Zerdenjan uranium conversion plant.

None of these facilities have been damaged by the attack, according to the Fars agency. That official media outlet claims that “several unidentified objects” were shot down by “the air defenses of the 8th Shekari military base, near its facilities.” That military base houses the obsolete Iranian fleet of Grumman F-14 Tomcat warplanes, which the overthrown shah Reza Pahlavi bought from the United States before the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Those old planes without spare parts, more than one threat, are a symbol of Iranian military inferiority with respect to Israel. The Shekari base is also not in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard, which commanded the Iranian attack against Israel on Saturday, but of the country's regular army, much less equipped.

In the same province, there is the Isfahan Missile Complex, the largest assembly and production site for this weapon in the country, according to the NGO NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative), which does not specify its exact location. . Built with the help of North Korea and China in the late 1980s, its facilities produce components, solid and liquid propellants, and assemble models such as the Shabab medium-range missile, with the capacity to reach Israeli territory, less than 2,000 kilometers away. Isfahan also hosts two missile deployment sites, according to a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. The United States estimated in 2022 that Iran had an arsenal of 3,000 ballistic missiles.

Drones, the other type of weaponry that the Iranian regime used in its attack against Israel last weekend, also have their main production center in that central province of Iran. The company that manufactures Shahed unmanned devices — including the models that Iran has provided to Russia for its war in Ukraine — are produced at the Shahed Aviation Industries company's facilities at the Badr military base, also in Isfahan. This company, sanctioned by the United States, is subordinate to the aerospace force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Isfahan is also home to an important anti-aircraft munitions factory that depends on the Ministry of Defense, according to the Iran Watch conventional weapons observatory.

nuclear program

Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.

Subscribe

The Nuclear Technology Center in the province of Isfahan, near the town of Natanz, is the largest atomic complex in Iran and surely one of the most guarded places in the country. Located on the arid central plateau about 225 kilometers south of Tehran, the fences surrounding the facilities are the most visible part of a tight protection device that includes anti-aircraft batteries from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Tehran built it with Chinese help in 1984 and kept it hidden from much of the international community for almost two decades. Until, in 2002, a shady opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, publicly revealed its existence.

On the surface, the center of Natanz extends almost three square kilometers, according to NTI. Underground, far from the cameras of Western satellites, an entire underground complex unfolds in tunnels that it is believed that not even the United States' bunker-busting weapons could reach.

These facilities have a multidisciplinary research center that has three small reactors - another is being built - provided by Beijing and, most importantly, a uranium centrifuge manufacturing workshop. The number and sophistication of these machines used to obtain enriched uranium 235, whether for civil or military use, is the focus of Western and Israeli concern regarding the Iranian nuclear program. To make an atomic weapon, many centrifuges are needed to produce a large amount of highly concentrated enriched uranium. The NTI estimates that the Natanz underground facility has the capacity to house up to 50,000 of these centrifuges, although in 2015, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated that Iran had about 19,000. At least 5,000 were in the Natanz complex.

The province attacked this morning is also home to other key nuclear facilities: the Zerdenjan uranium conversion plant. There, the raw uranium oxide concentrate extracted from the mines is processed to convert it into uranium hexafluoride, the product used by enrichment plants. That plant not only provides the uranium that is then enriched in Natanz, but also in the other large Iranian enrichment center for that mineral, Fordow, in the province of Qom.

_