Former Mossad Chief: Israel Repeatedly Circled Iran's Fordow Nuclear Facility

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has revealed that the United States airstrike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility in June 2025 was the realisation of all his dreams. Speaking at the Galilee Conference on Tuesday (11/8), Cohen also claimed that Israel had repeatedly circled the underground site. Despite Cohen welcoming the strike, uncertainty still surrounds the fate of Tehran’s enriched uranium reserves and the true extent of the damage to the facility buried deep underground. Last year, amid armed conflict with Iran, the United States launched strikes on Fordow and other major nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump claimed at the time that Iran’s primary enrichment sites had been completely and utterly destroyed. However, the latest intelligence assessments and satellite imagery analysis paint a different picture. In his speech, Yossi Cohen also noted that uranium enriched to 60 percent is still far from what is needed to make a nuclear bomb. This statement aligns with a US intelligence assessment published in May 2026, which indicated that Iran’s breakout timeline—the time required to produce a nuclear weapon—has not changed significantly since the June attack. This is due to the airstrike’s failure to eliminate the remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium. To date, the tunnels at Fordow are reported to still be blocked by debris and obstacles, but the core of Iran’s nuclear capability is considered not yet fully crippled.