16th April 2021, Kathmandu
A nuclear facility in Iran was hit by “sabotage” a day after it unveiled new uranium enrichment equipment, the country’s top nuclear official says.
The internal power system at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility was severely damaged due to an alleged Israeli operation on April 11, 2021. Initial reporting from the western media suggests that this was an Israeli cyber sabotage attempt by state actors.
Ali Akbar Salehi did not say who was to blame for the “terrorist act”, which caused a power failure at the Natanz complex south of Tehran on Sunday.
Israeli public media, however, cited intelligence sources who said it was the result of an Israeli cyber-attack. Israel has not commented on the incident directly.
But in recent days it has ramped up its warnings about Iran’s nuclear program.
The latest incident comes as diplomatic efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal – abandoned by the US under the Trump administration in 2018 – have resumed.
A similar attack was reported first in 2010, which is popularly known as the Stuxnet attack. Stuxnet was a computer worm designed specifically by the U.S. and Israel to target the industrial control systems (ICS) made by Siemens, which were also used by Iran in its Natanz nuclear power plant. The worm reportedly damaged more than 1000 centrifuges of the Natanz facility.
A second such attempt was made a decade later. On July 2, 2020, a fire in the main hall of the Natanz nuclear facility destroyed its roof. Although no affirmation of the exact impact was publicly given by Iran, a report from Al-Jarida quoted an unnamed senior source confirming Israel’s involvement in the cyberattack.
However, the most recent attack has been blamed on the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which is been called out by Iran multiple times for reportedly carrying out offensive operations on the cyber front. Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, informed that the affected centrifuges were old and first-generation, which is the IR-1 type. These can be replaced with advanced equipment shortly. However, the attack already seems to have pushed back the proceedings at the Natanz nuclear facility by at least nine months, forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call an urgent security cabinet meeting to assess the situation and determine Iran’s response.