Satellites are incredible tools. We rely on satellite data when entering a destination on our smartphones for a Sunday drive. They facilitate communication, and cable and broadcast networks use them to disseminate information. Furthermore, our intelligence agencies use satellites to monitor the activities of adversaries.
Bad guys like Iran. On Thursday, Fox News revealed some satellite imagery of a formerly secret Iranian nuclear facility.
Fox News has exclusively acquired satellite images showing what an opposition group claims is a previously unreported Iranian nuclear weapons site—raising new apprehensions amid the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and the Trump administration.
The newly discovered location, situated in Iran’s Semnan Province, is distant from the regime’s already-known nuclear sites. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), intelligence from sources within the country indicates a vast compound spanning nearly 2,500 acres.
Code-named the “Rainbow Site” by Iranian officials, the facility has reportedly been in operation for more than a decade, masked as a chemical production company known as Diba Energy Siba.
This is the chilling part:
According to NCRI sources, the primary function of the Rainbow Site is the extraction of tritium – a radioactive isotope used to enhance nuclear weapons. Unlike uranium enrichment, tritium has virtually no peaceful or commercial applications, casting further doubt on Iran’s longstanding claims that its nuclear ambitions are solely for energy or civilian use.
Tritium, we should note, isn’t used in producing fission weapons of the sort that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tritium is used to boost fission bombs for a substantial increase in yield, and it is used as a primary fuel source in thermonuclear weapons, or hydrogen bombs.
