Iran on Monday accused Israel of sabotaging its Natanz underground nuclear facility with an attack that damaged centrifuges used at the site to enrich uranium. Tehran warned it would retaliate.
THE CENTRIFUGES USED TO ENRICH URANIUM WERE DAMAGED
The comments by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh were the first official indictment against Israel for Sunday’s incident, which left the entire Natanz complex without power.
Israel has not directly claimed responsibility for the attack. However, suspicions were immediately directed in his direction, as Israeli media unanimously reported that a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by the country had caused the power outage.
If Israel is responsible, the event will exacerbate tensions between the two countries, already mired in indirect conflict throughout the Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop Iran’s new nuclear deal with international powers.
At a news conference Monday at Israel’s Nevatim air base, where he saw anti-aircraft and missile defense systems and his F-35 fighter jet, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declined to say whether the event would complicate the events. Biden’s efforts to re-negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program.
Israel announced on Tuesday that it has successfully carried out several key tests of the multilayer missile interception system, as tension with Iran has risen following the assassination last month of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, of which Tehran accuses Mossad.
“Those efforts will continue,” Austin said.
There were still few details about what happened at the nuclear complex on Sunday morning. The event was initially described as a blackout caused by the power grid that serves its surface workshops and underground uranium enrichment facilities.
“The answer to Natanz is to get revenge on Israel,” Khatibzadeh said. “Israel will receive its response in its own way,” he added, without going into details.
This is the Biden administration’s first military response.
Khatibzadeh acknowledged that the IR-1 centrifuges, the first generation of Iranian uranium enrichment machinery, had been damaged in the attack, although he did not elaborate. State television has not yet shown images of Natanz.
The attack also caused a fire at the site, according to a former head of the Revolutionary Guard, an influential Iranian paramilitary body, who called for security improvements in Natanz. In a tweet, General Mohsen Rezaei said that the second fire at the compound in a year indicated “the severity of the infiltration phenomenon.”
For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that Natanz would be rebuilt with more advanced machines, something that could jeopardize the talks started in Vienna with international powers to save the tough nuclear deal.
International tension with Tehran has recently increased due to the development of its nuclear program. To see more from Telemundo, visit now.telemundo.com
“The Zionists wanted revenge on the Iranian people for their success in lifting sanctions,” Zarif said, in remarks quoted by the Iranian state agency IRNA. “But we do not allow it, and we will take revenge on the Zionists for this action.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations agency that oversees the Iranian atomic program, had previously indicated that it was aware of media reports about the incident and had spoken with Iranian authorities about it. The IAEA did not elaborate.
Natanz has suffered attacks in the past. The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and believed to have been jointly developed by the United States and Israel, destroyed several Iranian centrifuges in Natanz in the past during an earlier time of Western concerns about the Tehran program.
The compound suffered a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant in July, which authorities later described as sabotage.
Iran is rebuilding that facility inside a nearby mountain. The country also indicted Israel for the November assassination of a scientist who founded Iran’s military nuclear program decades ago.