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interests / soc.history.war.misc / Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage

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Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage

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Subject: Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-natanz.html

Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage
The power failure was described by Iran as “nuclear terrorism” as talks
were underway in Vienna to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Natanz nuclear facility in Iran lost power on Sunday. It houses
centrifuges used for uranium enrichment. Credit...Raheb Homavandi/Reuters
By Ronen Bergman, Rick Gladstone and Farnaz Fassihi
Published April 11, 2021
Updated April 12, 2021, 8:28 a.m. ET

A power failure that appeared to have been caused by a deliberately
planned explosion struck Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site on
Sunday, in what Iranian officials called an act of sabotage that they
suggested had been carried out by Israel.

The blackout injected new uncertainty into diplomatic efforts that began
last week to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal repudiated by the Trump
administration.

Iran did not say precisely what had caused the blackout at the heavily
fortified site, which has been a target of previous sabotage, and Israel
publicly declined to confirm or deny any responsibility. But American
and Israeli intelligence officials said there had been an Israeli role.

Two intelligence officials briefed on the damage said it had been caused
by a large explosion that completely destroyed the independent — and
heavily protected — internal power system that supplies the underground
centrifuges that enrich uranium.

ANGER IN IRANThe country’s foreign minister blamed Israel for the attack
and vowed to exact revenge.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a
classified Israeli operation, said that the explosion had dealt a severe
blow to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and that it could take at least
nine months to restore Natanz’s production.

If so, Iran’s leverage in new talks sought by the Biden administration
to restore the nuclear agreement could be significantly compromised.
Iran has said it will take increasingly strong actions prohibited under
the agreement until the sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump
have been rescinded.

It was not immediately clear how much advance word — if any — the Biden
administration received about the Natanz operation, which happened on
the same morning that the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin
III, was visiting Israel. But Israeli officials have made no secret of
their unhappiness over Mr. Biden’s desire to revive the nuclear
agreement that his predecessor renounced in 2018.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization,
described the blackout as an act of “nuclear terrorism” and said the
international community must confront the threat.

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ImageAli Akbar Salehi, left, head of Iran’s nuclear program, and
President Hassan Rouhani at an exhibition of the country’s nuclear
achievements in Tehran on Saturday.
Ali Akbar Salehi, left, head of Iran’s nuclear program, and President
Hassan Rouhani at an exhibition of the country’s nuclear achievements in
Tehran on Saturday. Credit...Office of the Iranian Presidency, via
Associated Press
“The action this morning against the Natanz enrichment site shows the
defeat of those who oppose our country’s nuclear and political
development and the significant gains of our nuclear industry,” Mr.
Salehi said, according to the Iranian news media. “The incident shows
the failure of those who oppose Iran negotiating for sanctions relief.”

Israel, which considers Iran a dire adversary, has sabotaged Iran’s
nuclear work before, with tactics ranging from cyberattacks to outright
assassinations. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the killings of
several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years, including an ambush
on a key developer of its nuclear program last November.

Israel, as a matter of policy, neither confirms nor denies such actions.

The explosion at Natanz struck barely a week after the United States and
Iran, in their first significant diplomacy under the Biden
administration, participated in the new talks in Vienna aimed at
reviving the nuclear agreement abandoned by Mr. Trump, who described it
as “the worst deal” and a giveaway to Iran.

The talks to salvage the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., are set to resume this week.

It was not immediately clear how the incident at Natanz might affect
that. But Iran now faces a complicated calculation on how to respond,
especially if it concludes that Israel was responsible.

“Tehran faces an extremely tricky balance,” said Henry Rome, an Iran
analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “It will
feel compelled to retaliate in order to signal to Israel that attacks
are not cost-free.”

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At the same time, Mr. Rome said, “Iran also needs to ensure that such a
retaliation does not make it politically impossible for the West to
continue pushing forward with J.C.P.O.A. re-entry.”

Power was cut across the Natanz facility, Behrouz Kamalvandi, a civilian
nuclear program spokesman, told Iranian state television. He said there
had been no casualties or damage. But Iran has at times offered such
assessments in the immediate aftermath of sabotage, only to revise them
later.

Image
Centrifuges for enriching uranium at the Natanz complex in 2019.
Centrifuges for enriching uranium at the Natanz complex in
2019.Credit...Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, via Associated Press
Malek Shariati Niasar, an Iranian lawmaker who serves as a spokesman for
the Parliament’s energy committee, said on Twitter that the outage was
“very suspicious,” and raised the possibility of “sabotage and
infiltration.”

The blackout came less than year after a mysterious fire ravaged another
part of the Natanz facility, about 155 miles south of Tehran, the
capital. Iranian officials initially played down the effect of the fire,
which destroyed an above-the-ground facility for the assembly of
centrifuges, but later admitted that it had caused extensive damage.

Further raising suspicions, the blackout came a day after Iranian
officials lauded the inauguration of new, advanced centrifuges housed at
a site constructed following the Natanz fire.

Some Iranian experts dismissed initial speculation that a cyberattack
could have caused the power loss. The Natanz complex has its own power
grid, multiple backup systems and layers of security protection intended
to stop such an attack from abruptly shutting down its system.

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“It’s hard to imagine that it was a cyberattack,” said Ali Vaez, the
Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “The likely
scenario is that it either targeted the facility indirectly or through
physical infiltration.” The intelligence officials said it was indeed a
detonation of explosives.

While there is no direct dialogue between Iran and the United States at
the talks in Vienna, the other participants in the agreement — Britain,
China, France, Germany and Russia, under the chairmanship of the
European Union — are engaging in a form of shuttle diplomacy.

One working group is focusing on how to lift economic sanctions imposed
by the Trump administration, while another is looking at how Iran can
return to the terms that set limits on enriched uranium and the
centrifuges needed to produce it.

Image
A satellite photo showing the Natanz nuclear facility on April 7.
A satellite photo showing the Natanz nuclear facility on April
7.Credit...Planet Labs Inc., via Associated Press
Iran has said that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

It has also said while it intends to steadily resume nuclear activities
prohibited under the deal, it can easily reverse course if the sanctions
are rescinded.

On Saturday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, celebrated the new
centrifuges, which shorten the time needed to enrich uranium, the fuel
for nuclear bombs. But Mr. Rouhani also insisted that Iran’s efforts
were not intended to produce weapons.

“If the West looks at the morals and beliefs that exist in our country,
they will find that they should not be worried and sensitive about our
nuclear technology,” Mr. Rouhani said in remarks reported by Iran’s Mehr
News Agency.

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The new centrifuges were inaugurated on what Iran calls its National
Nuclear Day, an annual event to showcase the advances the country had
made in nuclear technology despite its economic isolation. The
celebrations even included the debut of a music video that featured
singing white-robed scientists standing beside centrifuges and holding
photos of colleagues who had been assassinated.

Mr. Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, was in Israel on Sunday for
talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s defense
minister, Benny Gantz.


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