Israel attacked multiple Iranian nuclear and military sites on Friday as tensions reached new heights over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was necessary to head off what they claimed was an imminent threat that Iran would build nuclear bombs.
The attack came one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors censured Iran for the first time in two decades for not working with its inspectors.
So, how close is Iran to developing a atomic weapon? Here, MailOnline takes a look at the country's nuclear program.
Where are Iran's nuclear facilities?
Iran's nuclear programme is spread over many locations.
While the threat of Israeli airstrikes has loomed for decades, only some of the sites have been built underground.
Does Iran have a nuclear weapons programme?
The United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog believe Iran had a coordinated, secret nuclear weapons programme that it halted in 2003.
The Islamic Republic denies ever having had one or planning to have one.
Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international sanctions under a 2015 deal with world powers.
That pact fell apart after Trump - then serving his first term as president - pulled the United States out of it in 2018 and Iran started abandoning the restrictions in the following year.
Is Iran Increasing Its Uranium Enrichment?
Iran ran has been expanding its uranium enrichment programme ever since the pact broke down, reducing the so-called 'breakout time' it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb to days or little more than a week from at least a year under the 2015 deal.
Actually making a bomb with that material would take longer. How long is less clear and is the subject of debate.
Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the 90% of weapons-grade, at two sites, and in theory it has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for six bombs, according to a yardstick of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog.
How close is Iran to having a nuclear weapon?
The attack came after the IAEA declared yesterday Iran was n breach of its nuclear obligations.
Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country ad swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.
Netanyahu claimed Iran had theoretically produced enough material for nine nuclear bombs, which posed a threat to Israel's 'very survival', he said.
What are Iran's main facilities for its nuclear programme?
Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel had targeted Natanz as part of its attack. Located 135 miles southeast of Tehran, it is the country's main enrichment site.
Part of the facility on Iran's Central Plateau is underground to defend against potential airstrikes. It operates multiple cascades, or groups of centrifuges working together to more quickly enrich uranium.
Fordo also hosts centrifuge cascades, but isn't as big a facility as Natanz. Buried under a mountain and protected by anti-aircraft batteries, Fordo appears designed to withstand airstrikes.
Its construction began at least in 2007, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, although Iran only informed the U.N. nuclear watchdog about the facility in 2009 after the U.S. and allied Western intelligence agencies became aware of its existence.
Iran's only commercial nuclear power plant is in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf.
Construction on the plant began under Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the mid-1970s. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the plant was repeatedly targeted in the Iran-Iraq war. Russia later completed construction of the facility.
Iran is building two other reactors like it at the site. Bushehr is fuelled by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran, and is monitored by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.
Then there is the Arak heavy water reactor. Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons.
That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon. Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
Isfashan Nuclear Technology Centre employs thousands of nuclear scientists. It is also home to three Chinese research reactors and laboratories associated with the country's atomic program.
The Tehran Research Reactor is at the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the civilian body overseeing the country's atomic program.
The U.S. actually provided Iran the reactor in 1967 as part of America's 'Atoms for Peace' program during the Cold War. It initially required highly enriched uranium but was later retrofitted to use low-enriched uranium over proliferation concerns.
Comments