Why is Iran protecting Fordow with S-300 batteries?

Iran’s placement of the advanced Russian S-300 missile defense system at its underground nuclear complex in Fordow, which the nuclear deal banned from being used for nuclear enrichment, indicates the continued importance of the site despite the deal’s limitations, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Tal Inbar, the head of the Space and UAV Research Center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya, said that by deploying the S-300s at Fordow, Iran was “poking a finger in the eye of the West.” The Iranians “could have put it at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which produces electricity and is civilian – Bushehr could not produce nuclear bombs,” Inbar continued. “They could have placed it symbolically at a military base in Iran, for example.” Fordow, the expert explained, “is not just another site. It is where the Iranians developed mechanisms for nuclear detonation, where the nuclear ‘physics package’ was developed.”

The placing of S-300s essentially takes a military strike on Fordow off the table.The nuclear deal prohibits Iran from enriching uranium at Fordow, but it can still use around 1,000 centrifuges for non-nuclear purposes. However, it is possible that its centrifuges can “be reconverted to enriching uranium in a short time,” two nuclear enrichment experts wrote in an analysis for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Furthermore, according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, Iran would be able to “reestablish Fordow as a uranium enrichment centrifuge plant with a capacity far in excess of its current capacity” once the deal expires. “It’s outrageous,” former Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) told The Israel Project. “The placement of an advanced missile defense system at a nuclear complex that the Iranians constructed underground shows how important the site is to Iran and is exceedingly dangerous because the centrifuges can be repurposed to enrich uranium, either if Iran cheats or when the nuclear deal expires.”

The United States and Europe had historically demanded that the Fordow site be dismantled as a condition for sanctions relief.  President Barack Obama said in 2009 that Fordow “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime,”adding in 2013 that “we know they don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful program.” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed alarm when he learned that the nuclear deal would allow Iran to continue operating centrifuges at Fordow. “We have pivoted away from demanding the closure of Fordow when the negotiations began, to considering its conversion into a research facility, to now allowing hundreds of centrifuges to spin at this underground bunker site where centrifuges could be quickly repurposed for illicit nuclear enrichment purposes,” he warned.