Iran blames Israel for attack at power plant
Despite vowing revenge for damaging electricity grid, talks will go on for US to rejoin nuclear deal
IRAN’S foreign minister yesterday vowed vengeance for an explosion at the Natanz nuclear site that he blamed directly on Israel.
“The Zionists want to take revenge because of our progress in the way to lift sanctions… they have publicly said that they will not allow this. But we will take our revenge from the Zionists,” Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted on Iran state television as saying.
Israel has all but claimed responsibility for damaging the electricity grid at the Natanz site on Sunday, with multiple Israeli outlets reporting that Mossad carried out the operation, which is believed to have shut down entire sections of the facility. The sabotage could set back uranium enrichment at the facility by at least nine months, US officials told the New York Times.
Iran yesterday said the person who caused the power outage at one of the production halls at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, had been identified. “Necessary measures are being taken to arrest this person,” the semi-official Nournews website reported, without giving further details.
The incident, which came as Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, was visiting Israel, could complicate ongoing efforts by Iran and America to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, an agreement Tehran signed with major powers in the face of fierce Israeli opposition.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who is fighting for his political survival at home, last week said he would not be bound to any agreement that would enable Iran to develop “weapons that threaten our extinction”.
The explosion at the mostly underground facility came the day after Iran’s National Nuclear Day, when it inaugurated new advanced centrifuges, another breach of the nuclear deal that Iran had progressively stepped back from since Donald Trump, the former US president, abandoned it three years ago.
On Saturday, Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, hailed the new centrifuges but reiterated Iran’s claims that the nuclear programme was not aimed at atomic weapons.
Iranian authorities described the incident at Natanz, which had previously been targeted for similar attacks, as an act of “nuclear terrorism”.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, suggested Israel carried out the attack to scuttle talks under way in Vienna aimed at salvaging the nuclear agreement. “Of course the Zionist regime, with this action, tried to take revenge on the people of Iran for their patience and wise attitude regarding the lifting of sanctions,” he said.
Iran said the first step to restoring the agreement would be for the US to lift crippling economic sanctions it reimposed after withdrawing from the agreement. The US said Iran must first return to compliance. Despite this, Israel remained concerned at the possibility of a return to an agreement. Mr Netanyahu has promised to do everything in his power to block such a deal.
Yesterday, he said: “Iran has never given up its quest for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel.” He made no direct comment about the Natanz incident.
Iran’s foreign ministry also said yesterday it is suspending cooperation with the European Union in various fields following the bloc’s decision to blacklist several Iranian security officials over a 2019 protest crackdown.
A foreign ministry spokesman “strongly condemned” the sanctions and said Iran is “suspending all human rights talks and cooperation resulting from these talks with the EU, especially in [the fields of] terrorism, drugs and refugees”.