Roving Periscope: Israel strikes Iran’s n-assets again; Rubio urges Beijing to pacify Tehran

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Days after the US stealth bombers potentially destroyed Iran’s three key nuclear assets on Saturday, Israel on Monday carried out a fresh wave of missile attacks on Iran’s underground Fordow atomic site.

Iran also counterattacked Israel with a salvo of missiles and drones, intensified diplomatic outreach, and approached the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) against both Israel and the US, the media reported on Monday.

However, any significant escalation of war, or its spread to other countries, would depend on how the permutations and combinations between the US, Russia, and China pan out.

Israel’s fresh attack came amid speculations that the US strike might not have succeeded fully, and that Iran may already have relocated enriched uranium to another place using a line of trucks.

Iran warned the United States that its military now has a free hand to attack all American targets, including civilians and soldiers, across the Middle East.

“The aggressor attacked the Fordow nuclear site again,” an Iranian media outlet, Tasnim news agency reported, quoting a government spokesperson.

While the US experts are yet to determine the impact their Operation Midnight Hammer had on Fordow, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said the bombing probably caused “very significant” damage to the underground areas of the facility.

“Given the explosive payload utilised and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said at an emergency meeting of the body. It had previously said no spike in off-site radiation levels was reported after the US strikes.

Recently, the IAEA had confirmed that Iran was producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo.

While commercial satellite imagery indicated severe damage to the Fordow nuclear plant and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, there has been no official confirmation as yet. The images show six holes where the US bombs appear to have penetrated the mountain.

Meanwhile, some experts, citing last week’s satellite imagery, indicated that Iran might have shifted a stockpile of near weapons-grade enriched uranium out of Fordow before the attack.

The images showed several vehicles queued up outside the facility. A senior Iranian official was quoted as saying that most of the near weapons-grade 60 percent highly enriched uranium was moved to an undisclosed location unknown to Israel or the US.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged China to dissuade Iran from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil shipping routes. His request followed Iranian state media reports that the country’s parliament had approved a proposal to close the Strait, although the final decision rests with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Rubio said the Strait’s closure would be ‘economic suicide’ for Iran as well.

The US joining Israel in attacking Iran has sent shockwaves across the world amid fears of the war escalating across the Middle East and beyond. It triggered hectic diplomatic moves by many a nation trying to prevent the likely fallout.

Nearly 1,000 Iranians and over two dozen Israelis were reported to have died in the fresh war that began on June 13 with Israel launching missile attacks on Iran.

Some Islamic countries like Pakistan, Qatar, and Yemen supported Iran in its war against Israel, and condemned the US’ involvement in the escalating war. Russia and China, which discussed the issue, are likely to back Iran soon.

The most important Iranian nuclear site at Fordo was struck by the US with at least six B-2 stealth bombers on Saturday morning, while Tomahawk cruise missiles struck the other two sites in Iran.

Secretly built in violation of UN resolutions under a rocky mountain near the holy central city of Qom, Fordo was first publicly revealed in 2009. Initially described as an “emergency” facility built underground to protect it from potential air attacks, Iran later indicated it was a uranium enrichment plant capable of housing about 3,000 centrifuges.

The ongoing conflict that began in the Middle East with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and left nearly 60,000 dead, has brought cargo movement through the Red Sea routes as well to a halt due to relentless attacks by Iran-supported and Yemen-based Houthi rebels on commercial shipping. Last year, the situation around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping route connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, escalated because of Houthi attacks.

India, which was being projected as the potential third largest economy in the next few years, may suffer the some of the consequences because of the ongoing wars.

Around 80 percent of India’s merchandise trade with Europe passes through the Red Sea, and substantial trade with the US also takes this route. Both these geographies account for 34 percent of India’s total exports.

The Red Sea Strait is vital for 30 percent of global container traffic and 12 percent of world trade. Based on the tariff war impact, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) recently warned that global trade will contract 0.2 percent in 2025 as against the earlier projection of 2.7 percent expansion.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the US strikes on Iran as a “dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security.”

“There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control – with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,” Guterres said in a statement on Sunday.

“At this perilous hour, it is critical to avoid a spiral of chaos. There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy. The only hope is peace,” he said.

US President Donald Trump had vowed that he would not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country’s leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.

The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, US and other world powers, created a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Then, Trump decried the Obama-era deal for giving Iran too much in return for too little, because the agreement did not cover Iran’s non-nuclear malign behaviour.