Iran is building what it termed a “defensive tunnel” in the capital, Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday, following two counter-strikes by Israel on Iran, including one last month.
Israel’s air force counter-attacked Iran on April 19 and in a much larger series of strikes on October 26 after the Islamic Republic launched two massive aerial attacks on the Jewish state on April 13-14 and October 1.
Tehran attacked Israel with over 300 aerial threats, including around 120 ballistic missiles in April and around 180 ballistic missiles on October 1.
The air force responded on April 19 by destroying Iran’s S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system, which was guarding its Natanz nuclear facility, and on October 26 by destroying four more critical S-300 systems, including a number of sites related to Iranian ballistic missile production.
According to the Tasnim report, the tunnel, located near the city center, will link a station on the Tehran metro to the Imam Khomeini hospital, thus allowing direct underground access to the medical facility.
“For the first time in the country, a tunnel with defensive applications is being built in Tehran,” the head of transport for Tehran City Council told Tasnim.
Examining Iran’s broader, longer-term strategy of underground fortifications
Although the initiative seems to be new, it could reflect Iran’s broader and longer-term strategy of using underground fortifications, which it has been using and expanding for years.
As early as 2006, Iran built a secret nuclear facility under a mountain at Fordow, which the West only exposed in 2009.
There is speculation that absent the facility’s exposure, Tehran might have tried to use the facility to clandestinely break out into a nuclear weapon.
In any event, by building the facility underground, Iran hoped it would be impossible for Israel to strike the facility, even if it wanted to.
In 2021, Iran started to build a second nuclear facility underground, under a mountain at Natanz.
At a number of other locations, Iran built its conventional ballistic missile facilities and a number of air force assets underground to protect them from being attacked.
This was also to make it harder for Jerusalem or Washington to attack various strategic sources of Iranian military power.
Although Iran called the new tunnels defensive and focused on connecting a hospital to a metro station, none of Israel’s two attacks on Iran have struck a single civilian location.
Rather, if the latest announcement follows past Iranian actions, it could be covered for moving more and more of its nuclear, military, and governing capabilities, as well as the ability to move assets in those fields around underground.
Such moves will make them harder to strike and allow the movement of assets beyond the sight of Israel’s and the US’s satellites.
During the weeks when Israeli and other defense experts debated whether Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear program or less important assets, one of the concerns was that if Jerusalem struck but did not hit the nuclear program, Tehran might decide to move its nuclear assets further out of reach, such as underground.
The latest announcement may now be such a process playing out.
