Recent satellite imagery has revealed activity at two Iranian nuclear sites that were targeted by Israeli and US strikes last year. These developments come amid heightened tensions over Iran’s severe response to widespread protests.

Images captured by Planet Labs PBC indicate that new roofs have been constructed over damaged structures at the Isfahan and Natanz facilities. This marks the first significant satellite-detected activity at any of these sites since the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran in June.

Iran has remained silent on the developments at these two nuclear sites, offering no public commentary.

Former US President Donald Trump consistently urged Iran to enter negotiations regarding its nuclear program, with the aim of preventing potential American military interventions linked to Iran’s protest suppression.

In response to the situation, the US has deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln along with several guided-missile destroyers to the Middle East. However, it remains uncertain if Trump will opt for military action.

Experts who have assessed the satellite images suggest that the new roofs do not necessarily indicate the beginning of reconstruction at these significantly damaged facilities.

Instead, they are likely part of Iran’s efforts to assess whether key assets — such as limited stocks of highly enriched uranium — survived the strikes,’ said Andrea Stricker, who studies Iran for the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, which has been sanctioned by Tehran.

‘They want to be able to get at any recovered assets they can get to without Israel or the United States seeing what survived,’ she said.

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Planet covered by a new roof at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the rubble of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site on Dec. 3, 2025

Prior to Israel launching a 12-day war with Iran in June, the Islamic Republic had three major nuclear sites associated with its program. 

Iran has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. 

However, Iranian officials in recent years have increasingly threatened to pursue the bomb. The West and the IAEA – a watchdog agency for the UN – say Iran had an organised nuclear weapons program up until 2003.

The Natanz site, some 135 miles south of the capital, is a mix of above- and below-ground laboratories that did the majority of Iran’s uranium enrichment. 

Before the war, the IAEA said Iran used advanced centrifuges there to enrich uranium up to 60 per cent, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Some of the material is presumed to have been onsite when the entire complex was attacked.

The facility outside the city of Isfahan was mainly known for producing the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges to be spun and purified.

A third site, Fordo, some 60 miles southwest of the capital, housed a hardened enrichment site under a mountain.

During last year’s war, Israel targeted the sites first, followed by US strikes using bunker-busting bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles. 

Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. The new roofs do not appear to be a sign of reconstruction starting at the heavily damaged facilities, according to experts who examined the sites

The US strikes ‘significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program,’ the White House’s National Security Strategy published in November said, though specifics on the damage have been hard to come by publicly.

Iran has not allowed IAEA inspectors to visit the sites since the attacks.

The main above-ground enrichment building at Natanz was known as the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant. Israel hit the building on June 13, leaving it ‘functionally destroyed,’ and ‘seriously damaging’ underground halls holding cascades of centrifuges, the IAEA’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said at the time. 

A US follow-up attack on June 22 hit Natanz’s underground facilities with bunker-busting bombs, likely decimating what remained.

The Planet Labs PBC images show Iran began in December to build a roof over the damaged plant. 

It completed work on the roof by the end of the month. Iran has not provided any public acknowledgement of that work. Natanz’s electrical system appears to still be destroyed.

Iran also appears to be continuing digging work that it began in 2023 at Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, or ‘Pickaxe Mountain,’ a few hundred meters south of the Natanz complex’s perimeter fence. 

Satellite images show piles of dirt from the excavation growing in size. It is believed to be building a new underground nuclear facility there.

At Isfahan, a similar roof over a structure near the facility’s northeast corner was being finished in early January. 

The exact function of that building isn’t publicly known, although the Israeli military at the time said its strikes at Isfahan targeted sites there associated with centrifuge manufacturing. 

Meanwhile, imagery shows that two tunnels into a mountain near the Isfahan facility have been packed with dirt, a measure against missile strikes that Iran also did just before the June war. 

A third tunnel appears to have been cleared of dirt, with a new set of walls built near the entrance as an apparent security measure.

Sarah Burkhard, a senior research associate for the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which long has watched Iran’s nuclear sites, said the roofs appear to be part of an operation to ‘recover any sort of remaining assets or rubble without letting us know what they are getting out of there.’