The Islamic Republic is likely preparing for the possibility of a US strike, experts told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday after reviewing high-resolution Sunday satellite images of the Isfahan nuclear complex.
Center and southern entrances to the nuclear facility have been covered with earth, and the northernmost tunnel entrance, which features additional passive defensive measures, has also been backfilled with soil, the images revealed.
“Backfilling the tunnel entrances would help dampen any potential airstrike and also make ground access in a special forces raid to seize or destroy any highly enriched uranium that may be housed inside, or the more difficult,” the Institute of Science and International Security said.
“Preparations like these were last observed in the days before Operation Midnight Hammer struck facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.”
“The late January and early February 2026 activity around the Isfahan nuclear complex is likely part of a larger push to create defensive layers to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile facilities in anticipation of a possible US strike,” Jonathan Hackett, a former US Marine Corps veteran, told the Post.
He served for 20 years, specializing in counterintelligence with affiliations to the US National Security Agency, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, and special operations units.
“While engineering units were backfilling these tunnels in Isfahan, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was similarly surging to protect ballistic missile sites,” he continued.
“On January 31, 2026, specialized IRGC Ground Forces units deployed around the country to provide additional security at strategic missile facilities critical to Iran’s defense-in-depth against a US attack.”
Hackett said that the distribution of forces was part of Iran’s two-decade-old strategy called “the Mosaic Doctrine.
“The IRGC’s Ground Forces and Aerospace Forces work together to secure the physical infrastructure the regime needs to transport, store, and protect short- and medium-range ballistic missiles at sites throughout the country that would be used against regional targets in the event of a US attack against Iran.”
Tehran and Washington held indirect talks last week as tensions have been mounting over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions and its brutal crackdown on protests, which have seen tens of thousands murdered across Iran and widespread human rights violations.
While some Iranian officials have said that Iran could agree to dilute its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of all sanctions imposed against its nuclear program, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi previously insisted that a complete halt to uranium enrichment is absolutely unacceptable to Iran.
“The discussions should focus on scenarios in which uranium enrichment continues, alongside assurances that the enrichment is solely for peaceful purposes,” he said.
Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a former British Army intelligence officer and one of the architects behind two of the UK’s National Security Strategies, pertaining to Britain’s National Security Secretariat, told the Post that the movement around the Isfahan site was likely meant as a message connected to the latest talks.
“Iran is protecting these facilities in ways that are observable from satellites,” Nusbacher said. “It is certainly easier to get a couple of bulldozers to clear the entrances than it is to rebuild the place after a Tomahawk or a Massive Ordnance Pentetrator turns these facilities into craters.”
“I think that Iran’s national security people have clearly assessed, perhaps in light of last week’s face-to-face discussions between Iran’s foreign minister and the American envoys, that they are being told either to give up their nuclear program or have it destroyed by American forces,” Nusbacher continued.
The only solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is for its people to establish a new government
While Tehran is conveying a message, Nusbacher said, Washington is “in the process of rather theatrically demonstrating a readiness and even an eagerness to attack Iran, including regime targets.”
“This buildup is, in my view, designed to shape Iran’s participation in talks with [US President Donald] Trump’s envoys on the future of its nuclear program,” the doctor said.
Still, it is also “a signal that the United States might be ready to make a far more committed set of attacks against Iranian nuclear targets than they did last year. This is particularly so because last year’s attacks, whatever their intent, appear not to have had a decisive effect.”
Noting that Tehran has previously agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons, and denied the existence of its ambitions while continuing to enrich Uranium, Nusbacher stressed that in her opinion, the “only long-term solution to the Iranian nuclear program is for the Iranian people to find themselves a government that is more interested in the needs of the Iranian people than in seeking to dominate the region.”
Sharing similar views, Dr. Efrat Sopher, an Iranian-Israeli security analyst and the chair of the Board of Advisors at the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research at the University of Haifa, said, “One wonders what the Iranians are hiding in Isfahan.”
“They also seem to expect some form of kinetic engagement. This is puzzling as one would assume that in the event of an attack on the complex in Isfahan, it would be bombed from the air.”