Satellite images analysed by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and published by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, October 13, show Iran reinforcing two nuclear sites since September: Natanz and a facility known as Pickaxe Mountain. The measures include new defensive barriers, described as makeshift earthworks designed to obstruct potential ground raids. Iran has also equipped airports, seaports and power plants with shelters and emergency supplies, according to Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, who said this publicly in late September. Iran is preparing its nuclear sites for the next phase of a war that Trump said five days earlier he would not resume before November 3.

Natanz is Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility. It was struck by US and Israeli forces in the opening weeks of the US-Israel war on Iran that began February 28. The strike damaged the facility without destroying its enrichment capacity. The IAEA has been unable to access it since the war began. The status of Iran's enrichment programme, and whether the strikes degraded it in any meaningful or durable way, is not publicly known. What is publicly known, as of Tuesday, is that Iran has been building earthworks around it since September. The earthworks are not a nuclear weapon. They are the preparations of a government that expects to be struck again and wants to complicate the second attempt.

Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, quoted in the Wall Street Journal report, described Iran's preparations as serving both deterrence and war planning. That framing is precise. Deterrence requires the adversary to believe that the next strike will be more costly than the last. War planning requires the defender to reduce the damage the next strike inflicts. The earthworks at Natanz serve both purposes simultaneously and contradict neither. They are also a message delivered in the only medium that cannot be denied: visible from space, published by a Washington institution, reported three weeks before the US midterm elections.

Trump announced on October 8 that the US will not attack Iran before November 3. He cited productive discussions. Iran has taken that announcement at face value in one specific sense: it is using the remaining weeks before November 4 to fortify the sites it expects will be targeted when the productive discussions end. The New Arab's account of the WSJ report notes that the measures were introduced in September, before Trump's announcement, suggesting the fortification programme preceded the no-strike pledge and was not triggered by it. Iran began preparing for the next round while the last round was still being described as a ceasefire. The earthworks were in place before anyone mentioned productive discussions.