The missile war: Iran's nuclear bunkers and Israeli air power
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The rocket actually got into the building and scored a direct hit against the bomb shelter and four people died here last night but two of them were in the bomb shelter and that's a big change. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars we end. Right now all eyes are on Washington but who's actually watching Europe at the moment?

To the Middle East now, more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

I'm Roland Olyphant and this is Battlelines. It's Monday the 16th of June 2025, day four of the Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. Iran said this morning that at least 224 people have been killed in the country since the Israeli strikes began on Friday. Israel said that so far 24 people have been killed and more than 500 injured by Iranian retaliatory attacks. By the time you hear this podcast, those figures may well have climbed.

So what happens next? Israel says its campaign is aimed at destroying or at least degrading Iran's nuclear program. But it has also killed top military and political officials. On Sunday, it expanded its strikes to government institutions. Hits have been reported on the Justice Ministry in western Tehran, the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Tehran, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Law Enforcement Command headquarters. And that comes a day after the IDF began striking energy infrastructure.

As the Institute for the Study of War notes, the degradation of the Iranian coercive apparatus coupled with energy shortages could destabilize the regime. So what is the Israeli endgame? Nuclear security or regime change? And how likely is it to succeed? And what of Iran's retaliation? Can Israel's air defenses really weather it?

A little housekeeping note before we go any further. This is obviously an absolutely enormous story with many moving parts. It's also very difficult to report from inside Iran, but we are trying. But if you or anyone you know is in the country, do let us know.

I started by calling Henry Bodkin, a Telegraph's Jerusalem correspondent, who spent the past few days reporting from the site of Iranian strikes on Israel. I'm in Petr Tikva, which is quite a modern affluent city to the west of Tel Aviv. It's quite symbolic of modern Israel because there's lots of quite good quality high-rises around here. The property is expensive in Israel because lots of people want to come and live here and so they

they build up and part of that is that they have lots of certified bomb shelters not just subterranean but after building and the reason I'm here is because a ballistic missile got through last night and scored a direct hit on one of these high rises. I'm sitting about 50 meters away from it so there's a hole in the corner of the building I guess between the sort of fourth and fifth floor it's not that big

It's charred around the edges. Although there's not an intact window for hundreds of meters and there's quite a lot of devastation, it's not actually nearly as bad as some of the other bombsites I've

I've been to on the outside, that just points to the sinister nature of what happened here last night, which is that the rocket actually got into the building and scored a direct hit against the bomb shelter. And four people died here last night, but two of them, the army have now said, were in the bomb shelter. And that's a big change for civilians in Israel because we believe that so far before last night, all of the fatalities were people who either didn't or couldn't

get to a certified bomb shelter and these reinforced bunkers are a huge part of what makes Israelis feel safe. That and the missile defence system which we've always known wasn't hermetic, that's what the army says, they say it's not hermetic but we've always known that some could get through but obviously the last three nights have proved that but the game changed last night because it actually changed

kill people in a bunker and that's what's so significant about this hit I think that's a really interesting point and I suppose it gets to the different nature of this war of course Israel's been at war for I forget how long now 18 months is it since October 7th but this is a whole different thing ballistic missiles are quite different to kind of Kassams coming out of Gaza and

What's your feeling? I mean, you know, you're living there. What's your feeling about how Israelis are reacting to or coping with this new level of war, a different level of threat, I think, than they've faced for decades? I think they're quietly shocked at the fatalities that are happening with these ballistic missile strikes.

because they're not used to them and of course being in the age we're in you know you can see them coming in going around on social media and stuff and they look properly terrifying they come in so fast they're like these kind of burning balls you know the fatalities are mounting up and I think people are

quietly beginning to realise that they're not as safe as they hoped they were. I think that's a very different thing from whether they think it was a good idea to attack Iran. The feeling I'm getting is that widespread kind of support for that, that they think that was a good idea and that this is an inevitable thing that they need to endure to

safeguard their existence. I haven't met a single person who doesn't agree with that central claim of Benjamin Netanyahu's argument that it's a war for Israel's existence. If in days, weeks, people begin to ask more questions about how effective the attacks on the nuclear side of Iran's infrastructure was, obviously the attacks are much more widespread now across their kind of military infrastructure. But if that turns out to have been

not that effective, then people might start to question that against the fatalities which are mounting up here. But overall now, it's distinct. It's separate. People are broadly supporting the war, but pretty shocked at how it's coming home to them in these civilian areas. What can you tell us about, I don't know, how many Iranian missiles we've got through, and about the areas that are being hit? I mean, I believe you're up in

I mean, you live up in Jerusalem. I think that's been relatively safe. Jerusalem hasn't been targeted. And as far as I'm aware, there haven't even been fragments or shrapnel landing in Jerusalem. A lot of the interceptions, the barrages of anti-aircraft missiles, that happens right above Jerusalem. So it's quite noisy at night. But yeah, I mean, Jerusalem's an odd one, isn't it? Because there's absolutely nothing to say that

the Iranians might not try to take out the Knesset or something in West Jerusalem that is kind of properly Israeli but the risk of hitting

third holiest site in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or just somewhere in East Jerusalem, which is a Palestinian largely Muslim area. There's a general assumption here that they probably would, in Jerusalem, that they probably wouldn't. So the main targets have been population areas in and around Tel Aviv. They've definitely been trying to hit some

infrastructure. They've definitely been trying to hit the Israeli Ministry of Defense, what's known as the Kiria, in Tel Aviv. They've also hit, I think, a refinery and some infrastructure around the port of Haifa. So it seems to be a mixture between military infrastructure, but also just a lot of highly populated areas

civilian areas. As ever with the Israeli military, they work hard at their PR and they kind of actively invite you to come and report on civilian hits and at the same time place very draconian restrictions on what you can say about hits near or on military targets. So we can't be specific about those, but it's clear that Iran are trying both. I'm not sure on the number of missiles they've expended, but I do know that there was a

a former national security advisor who spoke, I think, yesterday, who said that in his estimation, Iran has well over a thousand left at their disposal. That might not have taken into account the very active measures that the IDF are taking now to actually take these launch sites out on the ground and frustrate that side of things at source. But I don't think anyone here believes that Iran doesn't have hundreds more at its disposal.

disposal unless things start to go very well for the IDF. What do we know about the planning and the strategy of this? Obviously this is something that Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanting to do for years and calling for for years. He's finally got his way. I didn't realise that when we were talking about this in the past, when this was all hypothetical, it

It never occurred to me that this might be a weeks-long operation. What do we know about their planning, their objectives and why it's going to take so long? Well, Benjamin Netanyahu himself said that he issued the directive for this operation to take place in principle as far back as November. So...

Taking that at face value, the military have been given essentially an imprevisible green light for six months. Things like the Mossad infiltration into central Iran, which appears to be very, very daring and sophisticated, where they built a drone base and they set up remote-controlled

missile sites that could then take out other missile sites clearly indicates a lot of planning. The fact that the Israelis managed to take out so many key Iranian people, IRGC, military, that kind of thing, nuclear scientists in that first wave of bombing suggests really good intelligence penetration and a kind of long-term planning approach to it.

So, yeah, I mean, obviously this has been Israel's number one military priority for a very long time. Clearly it's going to go on for days. I mean, I've been speaking to people before this launch who said that Israel probably doesn't have the capacity to carry this on for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks as they would have done if America were helping. I mean, we know that Israel received a consignment of 300 air-to-surface missiles just last week from the Americans, but...

It's generally understood that Israel can't keep this going for a long period of time. So I think they'll try and do what they can

It'll be sort of days and a small number of weeks, probably. This was announced as a strike on Ukiah sites. That was the main reason given. And yet, actually, as every day goes on, that's spoken about less, and it's more about just hammering Iran's military infrastructure as much as possible. So on the basis that if you're changing the goalposts regularly, it's quite difficult to know how long it could go on.

Part of the reason I was asking, you've kind of raised the question right there. It was officially about the nuclear aspect. And yet Benjamin Netanyahu himself, I believe, and other Israeli officials have talked about regime change. They've talked about persuading Iranians to rise up against the regime. And they've just been hitting, I mean, we're talking on day four, I believe, of the air war.

They've been striking oil and gas facilities in Iran. That's a strike at the economy, not a strike at military or nuclear facilities. This kind of stuff, the attack on the economic infrastructure and the oil and gas in particular, this was talked about back last autumn when the Israelis did some limited airstrikes in Iran and there was a

there was a barrage from the Iranians all around the time of the Pager explosion plot in Lebanon and when the Northern Front war really kicked off. As ever with this government here, they put a lot of suggestions out, they put a lot of narratives out sort of unofficially which

which they allow the public and the media to run with and then officially say, well, we're not after regime change, but to the Iranian people, if we clear the path for you, you might care to get rid of the Ayatollahs yourself.

Slightly similar language, actually, although obviously in a completely different context to the language they used to the people in Gaza with Hamas. You know, just like it's time for you to rise up and throw off these oppressors if you really want to. I don't know how practical that is. It seems to be suiting the Israelis at the moment to kind of keep this offensive against Iran quite general in terms of its purpose, whilst also emphasising that the fight is not with the Iranian people.

You mentioned Gaza. What does this all mean for Gaza? There's obviously a danger that that will get overshadowed, but things are still going on there. Could you give us an update as far as you're aware of what's going on there and whether this war with Iran has direct implications for Gaza? The attention has just been so firmly elsewhere and I guess that's quite helpful in some causes here in Israel because it really had been a desperate situation. The population had been

approaching starvation increasingly desperate and you'd had these mass killings in and around these these controversial new aid hubs which were run by this this us firm that has the backing of israel and the us only but the rest of the world says you know this is not a very humanitarian way to go about things to force people to walk a lot in large distances to receive unsuitable aids and and then obviously

they seem to be a huge risk when they're near these places. Israeli soldiers continue to be killed in ones and twos and to be injured, so Hamas are still fighting in a proper guerrilla

There's still a huge use of air power in Gaza and large sections, I mean huge sections of the cities, Khan Yunis, Gaza City and others are completely uninhabited at the moment. So I don't think the main facts on the ground have changed, but it's certainly from a PR perspective a welcome change, I would imagine, for the Israelis, for the world not to be looking at it for at least a few days. I suppose one of the questions...

Henry, that still hasn't been answered is what about America? Is America going to enter this war? There was a little bit of hope here this morning when Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador, said that the US branch embassy in Tel Aviv, what used to be the main US embassy until the main US embassy was moved up to Jerusalem by Donald Trump in the first term for symbolic reasons, that took a bit of damage last night, indirect damage from a hit nearby.

And there was a bit of stuff on social media be like, oh, is this it? Is Uncle Sam going to join in and then we can get their bunker busting bombs and properly take out the nuclear program. But I think that's probably what we're thinking. But that is the big kind of unknown here with America getting involved.

Henry Bodkin there reporting from Israel. As Henry mentioned, in the past few days, Israel's strikes have widened well beyond merely Iran's nuclear program. But that remains at least officially the central target of this campaign. And there are three key sites that the Israelis have to hit. They are at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow.

Now, as of Monday morning, the Natanz fuel enrichment site and Isfahan had been hit and damaged in raids on Friday. But the IAEA, which has monitoring teams in Iran, said on Monday morning that Fordow, the deepest and best protected of the three, has not yet been struck.

So what exactly is Iran's nuclear program? How close was it to building a bomb? And can it really be destroyed by air power? I put those questions to David Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and a longtime observer of the Iranian nuclear program. I started by asking him just how close the Iranians were to building a bomb. Iran was developing a capability to be able to make nuclear weapons. Right.

rather quickly. I mean, and there's two parts to making a nuclear weapon. One is called the nuclear explosive material. In the case of Iran, it's called weapon grade uranium. And it was developing an enrichment program that was starting to produce kind of what's called precursor of weapon grade uranium, 60%. And the 60% enriched uranium is 99% of the way to the weapon grade. And

And so that means that translate, you could go from 60% to 90% very quickly. Over the last couple of years, Iran's put together this capability to be able to make weapon-grade uranium very quickly and to make lots of it. So in a month, they can make enough for several nuclear weapons with their nuclear capabilities, enrichment capabilities up to today.

The other part is you've got to take the weapon-grade uranium and turn it into a weapon. And in the past, Iran had a very robust nuclear weapons program. It ended it for various reasons, mostly international pressure and fear of invasion by the United States back in around 2003. But it didn't end the program entirely. It kept its capabilities intact.

And in the last couple of years, it's reactivated its capabilities to make the nuclear weapon itself once it would have enough weapon-grade uranium. And there's a lot of complicated parts in a nuclear weapon.

The design Iran has involves high explosives that have to be spherically compressed. You want to start a chain reaction in this core of weapon-grade uranium at the right moment, and for that you need what's called a neutron initiator. Initiating or starting the high explosives is difficult, and then creating the spurt of neutrons at the right moment is also difficult. Iran knew a lot about that already from its previous nuclear weapons work, but

but it looks like it's been accelerating it according to intelligence agencies in the last couple of years. And so you had a program where the time frames for building the bomb were shrinking considerably over the last couple of years. And that's obviously caused quite a bit of alarm. And part of the reason Israel's done what it's done. One of the questions that's always revolved around this was about Iran's actual intention. And, and,

In the years that I've been reporting this, every time I've spoken to a Western diplomat, there's always been a bit of a question mark about whether Iran has actually made a decision to build a bomb or whether they wanted to remain at a threshold state or whether they wanted a bomb at all. What's your kind of assessment of that? It's been a program where the weapon ears want to be prepared to build a bomb.

And so they don't want to be in a position of the leadership makes a decision to build the bomb. And then they say, oh, really? Maybe it's going to take us five years. So I think we see them focus on the technical side has been to shorten deadlines. And so the highly enriched uranium, the 60% enriched uranium, it's kind of the perfect indicator that Iran is moving to shorten the time frame to make weapon grade uranium.

In contrast, when they had a nuclear weapons program, it was a crashed nuclear weapons program in the 2000s. They couldn't make weapon-grade uranium. It was the real true bottleneck in the whole program. And then there's other bottlenecks that were in the program and that they have been working on those. And so the basic...

way we see the program is one to be prepared to build the bomb if so ordered. Now, we haven't seen evidence, and again, we don't, not in the confidence of the Israeli government, but we haven't seen evidence they've made a decision to actually build the bomb prior to this attack.

but that they were talking about it much more. And just going back quickly to that very comprehensive overview you gave us of their nuclear program, with this 60% enriched uranium, very quickly in a sentence, how close do you think in time were they to being able to build a bomb and how many do you think they could make at this moment? They could

produce weapon grade uranium within a few days enough for a bomb they could have enough for let's say 10 to 12 nuclear weapons in a month i think they need about six months to actually make the nuclear weapon and and they have some challenges to finishing up the design and the development steps so

So they, I think six months is what they would need from start to finish. But the weapon grade uranium part could be done very quickly and probably would be done toward the end of that six months. I don't see any reason to change my own assessment of six months.

But it is for a weapon that's not deliverable by a missile. I think it would take them longer to get a warhead for a ballistic missile, several months longer. Okay, which is another consideration. And when you're talking about warheads, I know this is a bit of a rabbit hole people can go down, but what kind of a warhead? Are we talking about something, I don't know, the size of the Hiroshima bomb or something bigger? Actually, it's about a half a meter across.

So the Iranian design was pretty far along when they ended the program in 2003.

And they've probably made improvements on it. So they always designed the warhead to fit on the Shahi-3 ballistic missile with the reentry vehicle at that time. Half a meter across. So quite small. But yeah, half a meter across. One of the scientists who was killed in this attack, Basi Devani is his last name. He was on TV not too long ago saying that, you know, Ron could build something. I mean, he was talking theoretically. He was careful. Yeah.

But he basically said, you know, U.S. and Israel, essentially he was saying U.S. and Israel better be careful because, you know, you can place a bomb inside your country. You don't need missile delivery to be able to cause great damage. This weapon, even though it's not missile deliverable, can be quite dangerous and quite a threat to enemies of Iran and neighbors.

And what kind of yield are we talking about on these bombs? I'm assuming it's not of the advanced kind of thermonuclear two-stage hydrogen kind of a weapon, or is it? No, no, no. It's a 10 kiloton weapon. I don't think Iran has done a lot of work to...

dig into more advanced weapons designs. We think, I think, and I might, people may think they've done some, but I, in our sense, this, this idea of a program to be prepared kind of uses the status quo that you achieved in the active program as the baseline and,

with an idea that if you did build a bomb, then you would be moving rapidly to try to develop more advanced weapons. And from our point of view, the first one would be one that would fit on one of their current ballistic missiles.

And then they would go for these more higher yield weapons. Got it. And just for comparison, you're saying 10 kilotons. I think that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons for comparison. That's right. Yeah. So it's the same order. And the Iranian bomb, they designed their bomb nuclear weapon so that it wouldn't need a nuclear test in order to have assurance it would work.

But they may indeed test one if they wanted to assert their nuclear status. And then you just, you would see. I mean, North Korea did that same kind of program and it fired at, you know, one tenth of the expected yield. After the break, can Israel's air campaign to destroy this nuclear program even succeed? And what are Iran's options for defense and retaliation?

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Can this program, from what we know about it, be destroyed by airstrikes? In the many years people have been talking about and reporting on this question, there have been lots of different opinions and there have been questions about whether the Israelis could do it without the Americans, whether they know where all of the facilities are, how deep they are underground. What's your understanding of the

the size, the scale of this program and the feasibility of being able to, to extinguish it through external force. You know, I used to be very skeptical. I mean, this goes back years. They're very skeptical that, that one could destroy Iran's, let's say, just take its enrichment program militarily. But I've shifted over time as I,

And part of the reason is that the methods of destruction have become much more sophisticated. And so much information is available about the Iranian program. You have this nuclear archive that Israel sees that has the blueprints of many of these buildings. Let's say Fordow, there's detailed blueprints. And so if you want to destroy the entrances and go as far back as you can with information

kind of more conventional weapons, you know how the tunnel zigs and zags. Tunnels are at $4 much more vulnerable than the main hall. And so you can do serious damage. You know where the ventilation system is and the ventilation, the exit for the ventilation system can't operate if it doesn't have airflow.

You know, you know where the electricity generators are and a centrifuge needs electricity and every centrifuge plant will have emergency backup and batteries, but those batteries wear out with time. And if you've knocked out the electrical supply and the centrifuges don't have any more, they'll spin down and many will break. So centrifuge program has certain vulnerabilities and the facilities are better known than, let's say,

You have a secret site and you really don't understand what's going on inside or how it's configured. And Israel has tremendous detail about all these sites. Now, the legitimate question is to ask, are they going to get enough? Centrifuges are small. Iran can make thousands or could make thousands a year. Will Israel destroy enough so it can't rebuild at another location?

And that we'll just have to wait and see. It's probably a key question for the Israeli bomb assessors to see exactly what's been taken out.

And you see some of this kind of selective targeting and carefully thought through targeting in the plan released or the schematic released by Israel of what it attacked at Natanz, where it attacked the hall that has about 10,000 centrifuges underground, has about 10,000 advanced centrifuges and some X number of these old IR-1s. But the 10,000 or so of the advanced ones, and they attacked that hall there.

underground very thoroughly. They attack the power supplies. They did not attack the pilot plant, which has about a thousand centrifuges. But if they cut off its electricity supply, then those centrifuges are going to run down and many will break. And in round two, they may go back and hit the pilot plant that's above ground. But they have thought this through very carefully of how to cause maximum destruction.

of the gas centrifuge program. And I imagine what they want to do is kind of push Iran back to a place where instead of a couple of days to enrich to weapon grade, they're going to need many, many months. And we'll see if they can do that. You can't eliminate the program. Well, if it was a reactor, you could, but this is a centrifuge program. And so you can't eliminate it, but you can

uh set it back it is unique this idea of killing the the leaders i mean and yeah they they're they want to go after the irgc leaders and have killed several and probably has more to do with their views on hamas and hezbollah than on the nuclear question based on who they've killed but they are iran's announced that six nuclear scientists were killed and um

And so that's rather unique. It's very hard to judge its effectiveness. I mean, we've tried because they've killed others. It's very hard to judge its effectiveness. You kind of preempted my next question. I really wanted to ask you about that, you know, because there is this thought of, you can see the strategy of decapitating the program by killing the scientists and

There was famously a series of assassinations inside Tehran by Israeli hit squads some years ago. People kind of planting bombs on the sides of cars and things to do that. And clearly they generated more. I'm also interested, I mean, you yourself are a nuclear physicist, I believe. Yeah, a physicist. I was in a different part of physics than nuclear, theoretically. Right.

I suppose if you're a scientist working on a weapons program in a way that makes you a legitimate target, but how does that... I don't know. I mean, well, that's the question, right? I'm clearly uncomfortable because where does it end? I mean, you do it to them, they do it to you. I mean, it spreads, sets precedent. You know, Russia does it to the US. US is going to do it to Russia, but you never know. So, I mean, it just...

I think it's not a good precedent. I don't know how else to put it. And one has to wonder about its effectiveness. I mean, yeah, maybe if, let's say, Oppenheimer and Manhattan Project had been assassinated by Germany, would that have stopped the bomb program? I would argue no. His skill was as a manager principally, but there's other managers. Leslie Groves, who really ran the whole program, was extremely effective.

And he found Oppenheimer, probably could find Oppenheimer's replacement. So, and I do know from, we monitor Iranian discussions on this subject. In fact, one who was just killed, Abbasi Devani has talked about it quite often, is that, and he was an earlier target. He escaped an assassination in that round year of 2010 to 2012.

And he said, you know, we really have university programs controlled by the IRGC. So they're military universities. And we try to train as many people as we can in these necessary scientific and engineering fields. So that if someone is killed, that person can be replaced by a competent successor. In general, I understand what Israel's trying to do, but I don't think it's the most effective way. But, you know, I'm biased. Thank you, David.

Now, the Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program has been so long awaited, so long thought about, so long theorized about, that many people began to think it would never happen. Certainly when I was thinking about it, I kind of conceived it as a one-night affair, a simple matter of precision bombs being dropped in one or two sites. But we're now on day four, and it doesn't look like this is going to stop any time soon.

To find out why, I spoke to Frank Ledwidge. He's a former intelligence officer who now teaches RAF personnel. He knows a thing or two about air campaigns, and he's been watching this one with interest. I started off by asking him just why is this taking so long? Strategic and operationally, the purpose is to shove the nuclear question down the road. Experts point out, people who know about these nuclear issues, that you can't really destroy Iran's

knowledge and capacity, you might be able to postpone the achievement of capability for a few years longer. Now, clearly, Israel has been trying to and successfully eroding Iran's capacity in terms of, by that I mean knowledge and expertise, by

killing their nuclear scientists and commanders at a fairly rapid rate over the last decade or so. This approach has been going on for a long time. I think it's Fakrizade, it was the sort of signature operation, which again, sort of foreruns this one. What you had there was, this was in 2020, you had a Mossad team

remotely kill one of Iran's nuclear, senior nuclear officials with a gun remotely operated, presumably, well, not necessarily from Israel, probably locally, on the streets of Tehran without killing anyone else.

which, of course, implies all kinds of pre-location, not only of people, but of intelligence, proxies, and what have you. Mossad stole the archive of Iran's nuclear program, I think, shortly afterwards. They discovered where these hard copy archives were held, and soft copy, and just went in and stole them. And again, that's very, as you say, that's quite Tom Cruise-ish in a sense, and it's all very swashbuckling.

But most of the work isn't swashbuckling. It's intelligence preparation of battlefield in the most granular detail, making sure that those operators don't encounter, for example, just as the Ukrainians did last week, police patrols and this kind of stuff that the operators are absolutely concerned about. You don't want shootouts, even at that very, very granular tactical level.

But moving forward to last Friday, look, I think this operation is going to go on for a month or so. And the pattern of this, we can see this again and again. The purpose of the Israelis now, as I said, to kick this nuclear issue, ideally kick it down the road for a few years. They can't take it out completely. That will require continuing operations now, at least I think for another couple of weeks.

to grind away Iran's defensive capabilities, to send the strategic message, but also, more importantly, to make sure they do absolutely everything they can to destroy what capabilities there are already existing in places like Fordow, which I'm sure we're going to get to, which I don't think Israel has got the capability to destroy yet.

but will be able to disrupt. Why is it taking so long? You say it could be a month or so, at least a couple more weeks of operations, previous operations to blow up the Syrian, the Iraqi, so on, nuclear ambitions. That was one night. Why is it taking so long? Right, that was one target.

So the Syrian operation was in Deir ez-Zor and the, I forget now where the Iraqi one was, there'll be people who are listening who know that. There's one target, one reactor casing, in neither case I think was the reactor working,

And that was that. The special forces on the ground, laser designators, a squadron of F-15Is and F-16s, and there you have it. Here we have dozens and dozens of targets. Of course, before you do anything in the air, you have to suppress and, if necessary, destroy your enemy's air defence system. Now, in those operations we discussed there, the Israelis did that. It was a one-off. In the case of the Syrian operation, it was with a cyber virus, Souter probably it's called, back in 1982, a different matter.

In this case, this is a classic suppression of enemy air defence operation conducted from the ground and from the air and destruction of enemy air defences. And again, that programme or that process started April last year, continued into October last year when...

The most advanced, and it's not a very strong field, of Iran's air defense systems were essentially taken down. The S-300 PMU, which, by the way, was the mainstay of the Ukrainian air defenses for two and a half of the last three years, really. So it's not like they're ineffective.

But the Iranians simply didn't have the numbers on the networks or the radars to make them effective or indeed any effective outside assistance. So that's the first element. And that's probably still going on. I think it's being completed now. So that's to gain yourself control of the air. And again, there are previous patterns. In terms of timings, the

The purpose here is to erode Iran's nuclear and indeed military capabilities as much as possible. This was the same overall purpose of the operation to liberate Kuwait, of course. The 100 days Allied air operations which dismantled Iraq's air and ground defences.

before the ground attack went in. Now, there's no ground attack going into Iran, obviously, at this point, but the purpose is the same. There are three key targets if we're talking strictly about the nuclear program. There's a plant at Natanz, there's one at Isfahan, and then there's the one at Fordow. Now, as far as I'm aware, we're now speaking on day four of the operation. I believe the Israelis have

struck or attempted to strike Isfahan and Natanz. For Dover, as far as we can tell, so far is untouched. It's also, as far as we understand, the hardest target to crack.

What can you tell us about those three objectives? And I mean, you've already kind of mentioned you're not sure the Israelis really have the kit to deal with Fordow. Just tell us about Fordow and what kind of a problem that presents from a tactical point of view. You can see from satellite photos.

broadly the shape of it. And that place will have been selected to have absolute maximum geological and geographical passive defence. So in other words, they'll have selected that to be perfect for the role that they wanted to play.

That's where the enrichment facilities are. And that's the key thing here. And as far as I know, the geology of it is there's a big slab of rock. Above that, there are meters and meters of reinforced concrete. We can get to the concrete issues, which are absolutely fascinating, actually. And many more meters of earth. So the whole thing is buried between 80 and 100 meters underground. The problem the Israelis have for this, which is why they haven't decisively assaulted it yet. I think they have actually had a go at the entrances, the tunnel entrances to

to this facility, but obviously all this is close hold in terms of what effect that's had. But anyhow, so let's assume the thing is 100 metres underground beneath specially built concrete and slabs of geology.

Right now, Israel doesn't have the weaponry to penetrate that. Indeed, right now, no one has the weaponry to penetrate that kind of depth in a WANA or even in several assaults. I mean, you could just look at their air force. They have no heavy bombers. The heaviest bomber they have is the F-15. That can carry about 10 tons of bombs, which would include...

like the GBU-28, which is 5,000 pounds of penetrating munitions and the physics of that. It's a bit like... The physics of it or the ballistics of it are very similar to anti-tank rounds. You have two... You have a bullet inside the round, essentially. The bomb penetrates the concrete and then there's another...

piece of all this inside that which fires down and penetrates or is intended to penetrate many, many meters of concrete. But the Israelis have nothing at the moment that can do the kind of depths that Fordow presents. Now, the Americans do.

And the constraint on the Israelis isn't the fact the Americans haven't given them the weapons, it's the weight of the weapons. It's a good 10, 20 tons. The only, I haven't got the dimensions in front of me, it's called a GBU-57, and it can penetrate to, say, the makers 60 meters or so. If your target is buried 100 meters underground, I think it's fair to say it probably is, then you're going to need to do that multiple times.

And as I say, the Israelis don't have that ordinance. Nor do they have the delivery capability for it. The only aircraft that can do that at the moment with any degree of security is the B-2 aircraft.

that the Americans have. They don't want to put B-52s even over a reasonably secure air defence or defender zone. There may be something that could compromise a B-52. So it's a B-2 you want and the Israelis don't have any of those and that's their challenge. Does the question therefore come down to getting America into the war if...

they want to hit Fordow in that case? If they want to destroy Fordow, I think that has to be the case, yes. And as I say, they are trying to compromise it through attacking the tunnel entrances and so forth. And they'll be hammering away at it, I think, over the next few weeks at some point to try and perhaps get a lucky shot or something. But no, they're going to need American help to finish that off. But even then, you know, Roland, even if they do

do that, you can't kill the knowledge. The knowledge is already there. All you can do is postpone the

the development processes which are centered now for Dao. I wanted to ask you, since you're an air war man, to try and flip it around, put yourself in Tehran, put yourself in the shoes of the Iranian air defense commanders. Things obviously not going that well. What are their options and what would you be seeking to do if you were the Iranians? Clearly one of the few

options they've got is firing missiles at Israel. Any other cards to play? The first thing you'd want to do is make sure the Americans stay out of this, because that's opening a box you don't really want to open. But I suspect those heads are probably not prevailing. We don't know the relative strengths of the remaining Iranian ballistic missile force, which is at least intact, was very capable indeed.

and the loadouts of the Israeli air defence system, Arrow, David Sling, Iron Dome and THAAD. Now, you'll have seen this morning and last night and indeed the last four days that the Israelis are firing a lot of ordnance into the sky, very expensive and hard to obtain ordnance. They will be getting reloads from the Americans, but that's a finite resource, as we saw in Ukraine.

And there are those who think that Israel may run short of this kind of ammunition. Now, that won't leave, needless to say, Israel defenceless. That's where we come in, of course. That's one reason why RAF jets have been sent to, I guess, Cyprus over the last day or two, to act as a backstop should Israel's air and missile defence system collapse.

And just sticking with the Iranian point of view very quickly, I mean, if you're in charge of Iranian air defence or the air force, it sounds like a bit of a nightmare scenario for somebody in charge of defending an airspace. I mean, what do you do in that case when your enemy has achieved air superiority? Is there any way of mitigating that?

the danger from above? So the answer is passive defence there. And by passive defence, that's essentially the kind of strategy we're beginning to adopt here called Very Wise. We call it agile combat employment. It's moving things around and making sure that you don't gather your leadership in one place. You take basic security mitigations. You take basic security precautions, which I don't need to go through because they're very obvious.

you can assume that all your communications are listened into. But as for shooting down aircraft or recovering control of the air, you're out of options. I mean, one question, though, I'd be asking if I were an Iranian air defence commander, who, by the way, I have no doubt whatsoever, knowing Iranians, many Iranians are extremely capable people. They just don't have a very good kit and very poor leadership. These are serious people, no question about it, especially the IRGC.

You might want to ask, well, all this stuff we've been supplying the Russians with over the last two or three years, three years in Ukraine, what have we got for that exactly? We've got some eight outmoded batteries of 1990s rocket missile systems, a few promises of secondhand fighters, Generation 4 fighters, and that's it. This is what Russia can offer, is it by way of help or by way of return of service or return of favours?

They've done nothing for them. And I think the Iranian people might reasonably ask, what exactly are we going to get for all this help that we've given the Russians? The answer is they've got nothing. So back to the point, it's passive defence. It's moving things around and they are doing that. No question about it. The trouble is the Israelis have got inside the decision cycles with control of the air. They've pretty much got what we call, what they call in Ukraine, ice to soak to a very great degree, which means they can see pretty much everything that's going on.

And therefore, all you can do is take basic precautions with your leadership and try and make decisions if you really want to damage the other side or provoke a wider conflict for whatever interest they may think that promotes. You need to retain your command and control systems or remaining command and control systems as best you can, because most of your kit and equipment is probably going to be destroyed.

Thank you Frank. That's all for today, but there's plenty of food for thought. You will have noticed that there is, as so often in the early stages of any war, a mountain of contradictory information. The truth is as deeply hidden as an Iranian nuclear bunker 80 metres beneath the Tehran mountains.

As Frank says, this looks like a campaign that is meant to last for weeks more. But as Henry reported, there are doubts about whether Israel can keep this up on its own for even a few more days. Whatever the future brings, we'll be watching very closely and we'll be back on Friday with the latest updates. Until then, that was Battlelines. Goodbye.

Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant, and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review, as it helps others to find the show.

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