JNS
The “main part” of the Islamic Republic’s uranium-enrichment capability was eliminated in the explosion, says the head of the Iranian parliament’s Research Center.
Thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges were damaged or destroyed in the blast that tore through Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility on Sunday, a regime official indicated on Tuesday, after Tehran accused Israel of being behind what it has called “nuclear terrorism” and vowed revenge.
In an interview with state-run Ofoq TV cited by the BBC, Alireza Zakani, head of the Iranian parliament’s Research Center, asked rhetorically, “Is it normal that today they [Israelis] reach a pit of our electricity system and take actions so that several thousand centrifuges are damaged and destroyed in one instant?”
He added, “Should not we be sensitive over the incident that happened [on Sunday], eliminating the main part of our enrichment capacities?”
A second Iranian official said that the attack—which The New York Times reported had been smuggled into the site and detonated remotely—occurred in a facility that was up to 50 meters underground.
Israeli Mideast expert Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall told JNS on Monday, “This isn’t the first time that centrifuges in Natanz have crashed in one way or another,” adding, “when a cascade breaks, this represents years of work that go down the drain.”
A previous explosion hit Natanz on July 2, 2020. On Tuesday, the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydun Abbasi-Davani, told state TV that the bomb that had caused that explosion was hidden inside a table at the nuclear facility, the BBC said.
Also on Tuesday, Iran announced that it will begin enriching uranium to 60 percent purity—its highest level yet.
Caption: A building at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, after it was damaged in a fire on July 2,2020.
Credit: Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
