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Video: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
new video loaded: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
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transcript
What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.
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What you’re seeing here are buried tunnel entrances at a nuclear facility in Iran. It’s one of the most important sites in the country for U.S. and Israeli forces. U.N. inspectors think that roughly half of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is buried here. And these three entrances are the only known ways to access it. If you think about nuclear sites in Iran, three main sites come to mind. They’re pretty well known: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Natanz and Fordo, They were largely taken out in U.S. strikes last year. So I’ve been focusing on Isfahan. The uranium here is still relatively accessible. It’s actually a pretty large complex. This area here was very important for uranium processing, but it was heavily hit by the U.S. and Israel last June. If you go a little bit further north, that is underground and that requires tunnels to enter. In a terrain view, it gets quite interesting. There are three roads that lead to these tunnel entrances, and these tunnel entrances have become very important, both last year, but also right now. They lead to the underground facility where U.N. inspectors say uranium is stored and a new enrichment site could be located. If this falls into the wrong hands, that would be a problem in the long term. Here’s a great example of how very recent satellite imagery gives us new insights. This is from late January of this year, and what you see here is a line of trucks. And they’re filled with soil, and they’re lining up to go to some of these tunnel entrances. If you look a little bit closer here, you see another one of these trucks that’s just unloading some of the soil and some earthmoving equipment. Iran in preparation for any possible attacks at that point. They try to protect this facility a little bit more. So this is Jan. 29. And if you just look a few days later, we go to Feb. 2. This is the completely buried tunnel entrance, completely covered in soil to protect from any attack. And this is how it still looks in mid-March. The U.S. and Israel have basically two options here: The first one is to heavily bombard the entrances to this underground complex that would block any access, at least in the near future. They haven’t done that yet. So that’s very, very interesting — a little bit surprising. And it might point towards a second option: That would be to go in with ground forces and to extract the uranium. But that would require a really large amount of troops to secure the vast area, bringing in earthmoving equipment to clear the tunnels and a lot of time in hostile territory.
By Christoph Koettl and Alexander Cardia
March 20, 2026
World
China deployed over 100 vessels near Taiwan in the wake of Trump-Xi summit, Taiwan security official claims
Taiwan warns US about China’s regional ambitions as Trump weighs arms deal
Fox Business correspondent Lydia Hu reports live on Taiwan’s top diplomat, Alexander Yui, sharing a warning about China as President Donald Trump weighs a proposed $14 billion arms package for the island. Yui stresses that Taiwan acts as a front-line defense, preventing China’s wider ambitions. Taiwan’s semiconductor production, 90% of the world’s advanced chips, makes US support critical.
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China has deployed over 100 vessels in the waters surrounding Taiwan in the week following President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the secretary general of Taiwan’s National Security Council said Saturday.
“Our ISR/intel shows that the PRC has deployed over 100 vessels around the 1st Island Chain over the past few days, so soon after the Beijing summit,” Secretary General Joseph Wu wrote on X.
“In this part of the world, China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the Status Quo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu concluded.
Wu posted a graphic appearing to show a high volume of Chinese vessel deployments in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and near Taiwan and The Philippines.
CHINA LAUNCHES LARGEST MILITARY DRILLS OFF TAIWAN IN 8 MONTHS WITH LIVE-FIRE EXERCISES CAUGHT ON CAMERA
A Taiwanese graphic showing alleged Chinese ship deployments near Taiwan and the broader Indo-Pacific region. (Taiwan National Security Council)
Wu alerted the world to the ship deployments a little more than a week after Trump left Beijing and just days after Acting U.S. Navy Secretary Hung Cao told U.S. lawmakers that the U.S. was temporarily pausing weapons shipments to Taiwan.
“Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury,” Cao testified during a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao testifies during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing titled “The Posture of the Department of the Navy in review of the Defense Authorization Request for FY2027 and the Future Years Defense Program,” in the Dirksen building on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
U.S. lawmakers approved a $14 billion weapons package to be sold to Taiwan in January, though Trump has yet to sign off on it.
AS CHINA TENSIONS LOOM, US TEMPORARILY PAUSES TAIWAN WEAPONS SALES DUE TO IRAN WAR, ACTING NAVY SECRETARY SAYS
Taiwanese officials say they were not alerted to any potential pauses, according to The Associated Press.
Cao’s pause announcement followed the Trump-Xi summit during which Chinese officials made clear that the Taiwan question is China’s biggest issue in diplomatic relations with the United States.
The USS Chung-Hoon observed a Chinese navy ship sharply crossing its path in the Taiwan Strait on June 3, 2023, forcing the American destroyer to slow to avoid a collision during a freedom of navigation transit alongside Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal. (Andre T. Richard/U.S. Navy)
“President Xi stressed to President Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a statement after the Trump-Xi bilateral meeting.
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“If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Ning concluded.
Fox News Digital contacted the White House, a representative for the Taiwanese government and the Chinese Foreign Ministry for additional comment.
Latest Truth Social post comes amid ‘delicate diplomacy’, expert says, as US and Iran indicate progress in talks.
Washington, DC – President Donald Trump has posted a photo of the United States flag covering the map of Iran, with the question: “United States of the Middle East?”
The post on Truth Social on Saturday represented another potentially incendiary message from Trump amid ongoing negotiations for a more lasting ceasefire in the US-Israeli war with Iran, experts said.
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It carries the potential to roil both regional allies and foes alike given Washington’s past intervention in the Middle East, most notably during the US invasion of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, as well as the Trump administration’s push to increase its influence abroad.
The sentiment also appears to run counter to the Trump administration’s repeated statements that it is not seeking a prolonged occupation of Iran. The US has maintained it is not seeking outright regime change in its war, which it launched alongside Israel on February 28, but that it would welcome such change as a byproduct of the military campaign.
Even for a president known for outlandish social media posts and conflicting messaging on the war, the post could have implications for ongoing negotiations aimed at a more lasting ceasefire, according to Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.
He pointed to Trump’s threat in early April that an “entire civilisation will die” if Iran did not agree to a deal at the time. Hours later, both sides agreed to a pause in fighting.
That pause has held since, save for a handful of flare-ups, with the US continuing to blockade Iranian ports and Tehran effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz.
“First he declared he wanted to eradicate Iran’s civilisation now he is declaring that he wants to turn Iran into an American property,” Nasr wrote on X.
“It is this kind of grotesque behaviour that undermines diplomacy and unites Iranians in defence of their country,” he added. “In the middle of delicate diplomacy he casts doubts on America’s true intentions.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fragile negotiations continue
On Saturday, both US and Iranian officials indicated a new deal may be within reach.
Trump told CBS News both sides were “getting a lot closer”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said an update could be coming shortly, the broadcaster reported.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the two sides were “currently working to finalise” a memorandum of understanding, and that “the opinions have been converging”.
Still, there have been no official announcements related to key sticking points in the standoff, including the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, the fate of its highly enriched uranium stockpile, and its future influence over the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump regularly uses his Truth Social account, which he launched after being briefly banned from Twitter, now X, in the wake of the 2020 election, to make major announcements, attack political enemies, and post AI-generated images and videos.
The foreign policy of his second term has been defined by efforts to grow US influence abroad, particularly in the Americas. That has included the military abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, continued threats against Cuba, and vows to take control of Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory in the North Atlantic.
The Trump administration has adopted the term the Donroe Doctrine, a reference to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which sought to diminish European influence in the Western Hemisphere.
On Saturday, Trump also posted an image of his face peering over a mountain range in Greenland.
“Hello, Greenland!” it said.
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