With a view toward Iran, Israel launches spy satellite
Israel said it successfully launched a new spy satellite yesterday as its leaders hinted it was behind a fire at an Iranian nuclear site last week — potentially ratcheting up a longrunning covert war.
If Israel was responsible for the fire at the heavily fortified Natanz facility, it would mark another in a series of daring strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme attributed to Israel, while also risking Iranian retaliation on either Israeli or Western targets.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the launch of the new Ofek 16 satellite, the latest addition to a fleet deployed over the past two decades.
“The success of the Ofek 16 satellite very much increases our ability to act against Israel’s enemies, near and far alike,” he told his Cabinet. “It greatly expands our ability to act on land, at sea, in the air and also in space.”
Netanyahu did not mention Iran or last week’s fire. But the Islamic Republic is Israel’s top security concern and a target of its satellite intelligence-gathering efforts.
After initially playing down last Friday’s fire, Iranian officials confirmed the blaze was much more powerful than initially indicated and that advanced centrifuges at the top-secret facility had been damaged. Iran’s nuclear agency said the damage to the centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for both civilian and military purposes, could delay research and development.
Iran has not directly blamed the fire on Israel or anyone else.
Israel, which accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the fire. But a growing pile of evidence is pointing toward Israel — one of the few countries with the motivation and capability to pull it off.
In a speech on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi noted that it was Israel’s long-term strategy to prevent Iran from gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon. He made no mention of the Natanz incident but noted that Israel takes “actions that are better left unsaid”.
A group calling itself the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” has claimed responsibility for the fire. The fact that Iran experts have never heard of the group, and that Iranian opposition groups denied involvement, has raised questions about possible foreign involvement. The group, claiming its members were dissidents from Iranian security services, referred to the site as “Kashan”, the home of a one-time Jewish community, instead of the modern name of Natanz.
Israel and the US are believed to have created the “Stuxnet” computer virus, which attacked Iran’s nuclear programme a decade
ago. At the time, Ashkenazi was Israel’s military chief of staff.
More recently, Israel uncovered what it called Iran’s “nuclear archive”, a collection of thousands of documents seized by Mossad agents from a Tehran warehouse in 2018. Israel says the documents prove that Iran intended to develop nuclear weapons and hid its efforts from the international community. Earlier this year, Israel was suspected of crippling an Iranian port in a hacking attack in response to an alleged Iranian cyber attack that targeted Israel’s water supply.
The Natanz fire came less than a week after an explosion in an area east of Tehran that analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.
Iran has long claimed its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, says Iran has been enriching uranium to about 4.5 per cent purity — below weapons grade but higher than the terms of the 2015 US-led international nuclear deal. Workers have also conducted tests on advanced centrifuges, according to the IAEA.
Iran says its breaches are a response to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the deal and to impose painful economic sanctions.