Iran won’t disclose cause of mysterious nuke site fire
An online video and messages purportedly claiming responsibility for a fire that analysts say damaged a centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear site deepened the mystery around the incident — even as Tehran insisted it knew the cause but would not make it public due to “security reasons.”
The multiple, different claims by a self-described group called the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” included language used by several exiled Iranian opposition organizations. They also focused almost entirely on Iran’s nuclear program, viewed by Israel as a danger to its very existence.
The disparate messages, as well as the fact that Iran experts have never heard of the group before, raised questions about whether Natanz again had faced sabotage by a foreign nation as it had during the Stuxnet computer virus outbreak believed to have been engineered by the U.S. and Israel. Tehran’s reaction so far shows Iranian officials are increasingly taking the possibility seriously.
“If it is proven that our country has been attacked by cyberattacks, we will respond,” warned Gen. Gholam Reza Jalali, the head of Iran’s military unit in charge of combating sabotage, according to a report late Thursday by the Mizan news agency.
Iranian officials have sought to downplay the fire, which erupted early Thursday, calling it only an “incident” that affected an “industrial shed.” However, a released photo and video of the site broadcast by Iranian state television showed a two-story brick building with scorch marks and its roof apparently destroyed. Debris on the ground and a door that looked blown off its hinges suggested an explosion accompanied the blaze.
Two U.S.-based analysts who spoke to The Associated Press, relying on released pictures and satellite images, identified the affected building as Natanz’s new Iran Centrifuge Assembly Center. A satellite image on Friday by Planet Labs Inc., annotated by experts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies, shows what appears to be damage done to half of the building.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said none of its inspectors were at Natanz at the time of the fire and “that the location where the incident occurred does not contain nuclear materials.”
Before news of the fire became public Thursday, the BBC’s Persian service says its journalists received emails from the self-proclaimed “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claiming an attack at Natanz.
A video claimed the group included “soldiers from the heart of regime’s security organizations” who wanted to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Iran long has maintained its atomic program is for peaceful purposes. However, the IAEA has said that Iran “carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” in a “structured program” through the end of 2003.
Suspicion over the incident immediately fell on Israel, including in a commentary published by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency Thursday.
Meir Javedanfar, an Iran lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, who viewed the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” video, said any domestic group that managed to penetrate Iran’s heavily guarded nuclear facilities would be unlikely to risk being captured by distributing such a video. He said “it’s difficult to know” if Israel’s Mossad or another foreign intelligence agency produced the video.
“It could be a foreign intelligence agency, in order to sow discord in Iran … or maybe it’s a false flag by the Iranian regime in order to crack down,” Javedanfar said.
Iran had begun experimenting with advanced centrifuge models in the wake of the U.S. unilaterally withdrawing two years ago from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. It’s unclear if Iran has another similar-size assembly facility.