The IDF has raided the Arak heavy water facility as it tries to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran
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The Iranian regime’s retention of important nuclear weapons resources and its material for building atomic bombs – highly enriched uranium – has led to renewed efforts by the US military and the Israeli military to remove the last remnants of the regime’s program.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that, “The Air Force Hit the Arak Heavy Water Plant – The Main Production Site of Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons.” The Arak plant is located in central Iran.
Before Friday’s attack, an IDF spokesman told Fox News Digital about Arak, that there is a “high probability” that the attack “on uranium enrichment facilities is part of a plan.” The IDF declined to answer specific questions about the target list and whether any ground operations to recover nuclear-grade uranium were being considered.
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The IDF infographic shows Iran’s Arak heavy water site, which is described as the main infrastructure for plutonium production. (IDF)
Reuters, citing state media Fars, reported that joint US-Israeli strikes on Friday hit a heavy water research facility in Khondab.
A statement released by the IDF said, “Powered water is a unique material used to operate nuclear reactors, such as the defunct Arak reactor, which was originally designed to be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. These materials can also be used as a neutron source for nuclear weapons.”
The IDF statement added that “This plant has been an important economic asset of the terrorist regime and serves as a source of income for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, which generates tens of millions of dollars each year.”
The foreign minister of this regime sent a condemnation of Israel and warned the Jewish state, “Iran will pay a heavy price for Israel’s crimes.”
According to an article published by the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), “The IR-40 Arak, aka Khondab, Heavy Water Reactor and Heavy Water Production Plant date from the early 2000s… The main design of the reactor was to make large quantities of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium.”
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Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told Fox News Digital, “The one nuclear site that hasn’t been hit so far is Pickaxe Mountain, so hitting that site of Operation Epic Fury will be important as part of continuing to undermine Iran’s nuclear program.”
A White House spokesperson referred Fox News Digital to President Trump’s Cabinet meeting regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Trump said on Thursday, “We’re free to walk into their cities and towns and destroy all their crazy nuclear weapons and missiles and drones that they’re building.”
The map shows the damage to Iran’s Fordow base after the United States struck it in Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, 2025. (Fox Stories)
David Albright, a physicist, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security told Fox News Digital that with regard to the remaining important nuclear weapons sites, “The elephants in the tent are Natanz and Isfahan. There was an attack on Natanz that was revealed by the Iranians, but the Israelis say they don’t know about the attack. So it has to be the US,” he said.
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He said that Natanz has enriched uranium. “The Iranians were doing recovery work at an underground fuel enrichment facility there and they’re continuing to build this mountain pickaxe tunnel, which can store enriched uranium. Next to it is another tunnel that was built much earlier, around 2007… And the Iranians are closing it, tightening it. There’s something obviously important there.”
Albright said the US and Israeli airstrikes “did not hit the area under Isfahan. We know, according to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]the most enriched uranium is at that site.” He continued, “There may be an enrichment center being built in that underground building. We would like that place to be invaded.”
Iranian worshipers raise their hands as a sign of solidarity with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during an anti-Israel rally to condemn Israel’s attack on Iran, in the city of Tehran, Iran, on June 20, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Albright warned that the war should not end like the previous US-Israeli war with Iran in 2025 when Tehran keeps the “jewels” of its atomic weapons program: highly enriched uranium and a number of centrifuges.
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He warned, “You don’t want it to come out of this war with the same nuclear power it had at the end of the June war with a huge incentive to build a bomb.” He added, that is why it is so important to ‘finish the job,’ in Iran.
