{"id":433765,"date":"2026-05-09T18:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T18:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/433765\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T18:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T18:56:09","slug":"israel-us-focused-strikes-on-irans-nuclear-weaponization-over-enrichment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/433765\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel, US focused strikes on Iran&#8217;s nuclear weaponization over enrichment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Israel and the US prioritized the degradation of Iran&#8217;s nuclear weaponization abilities during Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury over the targeting of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-894864\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nuclear enrichment<\/a> sites, an Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) analysis of satellite imagery revealed on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>According to the analysis, little new damage was dealt to Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-892634\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">already destroyed<\/a> in strikes carried out during the 12-day war in June of 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Instead, facilities and infrastructure related to the weaponization of enriched uranium, such as development sites, were targeted.<\/p>\n<p>One such target analyzed by the institute was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-888715\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Min Zadai site<\/a>, which is suspected to have played a key role in Iran&#8217;s attempts to recover nuclear weapons capabilities after the June 2025 strikes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">On March 3, the IDF announced strikes on the complex, describing the site as a partially underground \u201cnuclear headquarters&#8221; where nuclear scientists were developing key components for nuclear weapons systems.<\/p>\n<p>Reporting\u00a0by the French newspaper\u00a0Le Monde suggested that the Min Zadai complex was involved in the metallurgy of nuclear weapons\u00a0cores.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another such site is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-889729\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taleghan 2<\/a>, a highly fortified facility within Iran\u2019s Parchin military complex that has been used in Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons testing and development of advanced explosives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Universities with connections to Iran\u2019s development of nuclear weapons were also targeted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Tehran\u2019s Malek Ashtar University, which the IDF directly tied to nuclear weaponization, and an adjacent laboratory-type building connected to the university by a footbridge, were heavily damaged in strikes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The university-adjacent laboratory was built right next to the Mojdeh site, a nuclear site destroyed by Israeli strikes in June 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Imam Hussein University, a key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) university, was struck on March 10 for hosting an underground weapons research and development complex used by the IRGC for experimentation and testing related to ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In addition to at least four sites specifically tied to nuclear weaponization by the IDF, the ISIS analysis identified three other targeted sites likely to have also been used in the development of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The destruction of key weaponization sites, according to the institute, likely significantly increased the time it would take for Iran to complete the production of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel and the US prioritized the degradation of Iran&#8217;s nuclear weaponization abilities during Operation Roaring Lion and Operation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,1031,87,92,46,43,157282,157283,3336,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-433765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-idf","tag-iran","tag-iran-nuclear","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-operation-epic-fury","tag-operation-roaring-lion","tag-tehran","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}