DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iran blamed Israel on Monday for a sabotage attack on its underground nuclear facility in Natanz that damaged its centrifuges, an attack that threatens ongoing talks over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal. and involves a shadow war between the two countries. the light.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack. It rarely does it for operations carried out by its secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency. However, Israeli media reported widely that the country had orchestrated a devastating cyber attack that blacked out the nuclear facility.
While the nature of the attack and the extent of the damage at Natanz remains unclear, a former Iranian official said the attack started a fire, while a spokesman called a “possible minor explosion.”
The attack also strains relations between the US, now negotiating in Vienna under President Joe Biden to rejoin the nuclear accord, and Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to stop the deal at all costs.
Netanyahu met with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday, whose arrival in Israel coincided with the first word of the attack. The two spoke briefly with journalists but did not answer any questions.
“My policy as Israel’s Prime Minister is clear: I will never allow Iran to acquire the nuclear capability to achieve its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel,” Netanyahu said. “And Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression and terrorism.”
At a previous press conference at Israel’s Nevatim Air Force Base, Austin declined to say whether the attack in Natanz could hinder the Biden administration’s efforts to re-engage with Iran in its nuclear program.
“Those efforts will continue,” said Austin. The previous US administration led by Donald Trump had pulled out of the nuclear deal with world powers, prompting Iran to start giving up the limits of its nuclear program as set by the accord.
But German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed concern that this could affect the talks. “Everything we hear from Tehran does not contribute positively to this,” Maas told reporters.
Details of what happened at the facility early on Sunday have remained scarce. The event was initially described only as a power outage in the power grid feeding above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls – but later Iranian officials began calling it an attack.
A senior Biden government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the attack in Natanz without permission, said the US government was not involved in the sabotage.
A former head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said the attack had started a fire at the site and called for security improvements. In a tweet, General Mohsen Rezaei said the second attack on Natanz in a year pointed to “the seriousness of the infiltration phenomenon.” Rezaei did not say where he got his information.
The facility appeared to be in such disarray that, after the attack, a prominent nuclear spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, walking above ground on the site, fell 7 meters through an open ventilation shaft covered in aluminum debris, killing his head.
“A possible minor explosion had scattered debris,” Kamalvandi said without elaborating.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh acknowledged that IR-1 centrifuges, the workhorse of Iran’s first generation uranium enrichment, had been damaged in the attack, but went no further. State television has not yet shown images of the site, on which new advanced centrifuges were turned on on Saturday
“The answer for Natanz is to get revenge on Israel,” Khatibzadeh said. “Israel will receive its answer through its own path.” He didn’t go any further.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, meanwhile, warned that Natanz would be reconstructed with more sophisticated machines. That would allow Iran to enrich uranium more quickly, complicating nuclear talks.
“The Zionists wanted to take revenge on the Iranian people for their success on the path of lifting sanctions,” Iranian state news agency IRNA Zairf quoted. “But we will not allow (it), and we will retaliate for this action against the Zionists.”
Officials on Monday made an effort to provide Natanz with emergency power, said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s head of civilian nuclear program. He said the sabotage had not stopped the fortification there, without elaborating further.
The IAEA, the United Nations body overseeing Tehran’s nuclear program, previously said it was aware of media reports of the Natanz power outage and had discussed it with Iranian officials. The agency did not proceed.
Natanz has been the target of sabotage in the pastThe Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and widely believed to be a joint American-Israeli creation, once disrupted and destroyed Iranian centrifuges there during an earlier period of Western fears over Tehran’s program.
In July, Natanz had a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant which authorities later described as sabotage. Iran is now rebuilding that facility deep in a nearby mountain. Iran also blamed Israel for this, as well as the murder of a scientist in November which began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier.
Israel has also launched a series of air strikes in neighboring Syria targeting Iranian troops and their equipment. Israel is also suspected in an attack on an Iranian cargo ship last week that would serve as a floating base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard off the coast of Yemen.
Multiple Israeli media outlets reported on Sunday that an Israeli cyber attack triggered the blackout, but it remains unclear what actually happened there. Kan public broadcaster said the Mossad was behind the attack. Channel 12 TV called “experts” who estimated that the attack had knocked out entire parts of the facility.
While the reports provided no sources for their information, the Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence services.
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has repeatedly described Iran as the greatest threat to his country as he struggles to hold on to power after multiple elections and faces corruption allegations. The abandonment of the nuclear deal is a repeated theme in his remarks.
Associated Press Writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; Robert Burns and Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Matthew Lee in Washington and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.