Israel launches spy satellite amid suspicion of sabotage at Iran nuclear factories
ISRAEL launched a spy satellite yesterday that could help monitor Iran’s nuclear activity, as Israeli officials remained evasive about incidents at Iranian industrial facilities that have raised suspicions of foreign sabotage.
Israel’s defence ministry said the Ofek 16 satellite was transmitting data after successfully launching, joining an array of spy satellites the country has placed into orbit since 1988.
“The investment of Israel in space technology is considered essential and strategic for intelligence purposes,” an Israeli defence official said.
The addition of another satellite would improve Israel’s intelligence gathering speed, said Amnon Harari, the head of the defence ministry’s space and satellite programme.
“Iran is investing a lot into building its space power and programme,” he added, referring to Tehran successfully launching its own military satellite in April after months of failures.
“The effort is there and we should assume that eventually, they will reach a significant level in this area.”
Israel’s launch came the day after Iran acknowledged that an unexplained fire at the underground Natanz nuclear plant last Thursday caused significant damage to its main uranium enrichment facility, and could slow its production of advanced centrifuges.
Keivan Khosravi, the spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, said the “cause of the accident” at the centrifuge assembly plant in Isfahan province had been identified, but did not offer more information “due to security considerations”.
Other Iranian facilities have reported mysterious incidents recently, including a fire at a power station in south-west Iran on Saturday, an explosion at a medical clinic north of Tehran that killed 19 people last Tuesday, and an explosion at a missile facility near Tehran on June 26.
Israel has shown itself capable of carrying out operations in Iran, including the brazen theft of half a ton of secret nuclear documents from a Tehran warehouse in 2018, but its officials do not normally confirm covert activities.
When asked about the Natanz fire, Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli foreign minister, said “we take actions that are better left unsaid,” and Benny Gantz, the defence minister, told Army Radio that “not everything that happens in Iran is necessarily related to us”.
Iranian state news agency IRNA published an article last Thursday addressing what it called the possibility of sabotage by Israel and the United States, although it avoided accusing either directly.