A power outage apparently caused by a deliberate planned explosion hit the Natanz uranium enrichment area in Iran on Sunday, according to what Iranian officials call a sabotage that they say was carried out by Israel.
The eclipse has brought new uncertainty into diplomatic efforts that began last week to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal rejected by the Trump administration.
Iran did not say exactly what caused the eclipse on the heavily fortified terrain, which was a target of previous sabotage, and Israel did not want to publicly confirm or deny any responsibility. But U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials said there was an Israeli role.
Two intelligence officials said the damage was caused by a large explosion that completely destroyed the independent and highly protected internal power system that enriched the uranium-enriched underground centrifuges.
Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a classified Israeli operation, said the blast gave Iran’s ability to enrich uranium a severe blow and that it could take at least nine months for Natanz’s production. to recover.
If that is the case, the leverage of Iran in new talks sought by the Biden government to restore the nuclear deal could be significantly jeopardized. Iran has said it will take increasingly strong action banning the deal until the sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump are repealed.
It was not immediately clear how many advance messages – if any – the Biden government had received about the Natanz operation, which happened the same morning when US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited Israel. But Israeli officials have made no secret of their unhappiness over Biden’s desire to revive the 2018 nuclear deal that his predecessor renounced.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s nuclear energy organization, described the blackout as an act of “nuclear terrorism” and said the international community should face the threat.
“This morning’s action against the Natanz enrichment site shows the defeat of those who oppose our country’s nuclear and political development and the significant gains of our nuclear industry,” he said. Salehi said according to Iranian news media. “The incident shows the failure of those negotiating against Iran to ease sanctions.”
Israel, which sees Iran as a serious adversary, has previously sabotaged Iran’s nuclear work, using tactics ranging from cyber attacks to outright assassinations. Israel is believed to have organized the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists over the past few years, including a trap set on a key developer of its nuclear program last November.
As a policy issue, Israel does not affirm and deny it.
The explosion at Natanz barely a week after the United States and Iran took part in the new talks in Vienna in their first major diplomacy under the Biden government, aimed at reviving the nuclear deal signed by Mr. Trump was abandoned, describing it as “the worst deal” and a giving away to Iran.
Talks to conclude the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, will resume this week.
It was not immediately clear how the incident in Natanz could have affected it. But Iran now faces a complicated calculation on how to respond, especially if it concludes that Israel was responsible.
“Tehran has an extremely difficult balance,” said Henry Rome, an Iranian analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultant. “It will be obligatory to retaliate to show Israel that attacks are not free.”
At the same time, Mr. Rome said: “Iran must also ensure that such retaliation does not make it politically impossible for the West to continue joining the JCPOA.”
Power was cut across the Natanz plant, Behrouz Kamalvandi, a civilian nuclear program program spokesman, told Iranian state television. He said there were no casualties or damage. But Iran sometimes offered such assessments immediately after the sabotage, to review later.
Malek Shariati Niasar, an Iranian lawmaker who serves as spokesman for Parliament’s energy committee, said on Twitter that the interruption was ‘very suspicious’, and raised the possibility of ‘sabotage and infiltration’.
The eclipse took place less than a year after a mysterious fire destroyed another part of the Natanz plant, about 155 kilometers south of Tehran, the capital. Iranian officials initially diminished the effects of the fire, which destroyed an above-ground centrifuge assembly facility, but later acknowledged that it had caused extensive damage.
The eclipse was further suspected, a day after Iranian officials praised the inauguration of new, advanced centrifuges built on a site built after the Natanz fire.
Some Iranian experts rejected the first speculation that a cyber attack could have caused the loss of power. The Natanz complex has its own power network, multiple backup systems and low security protection designed to prevent such an attack from suddenly shutting down the system.
“It is difficult to imagine that it was a cyber attack,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group. “The likely scenario is that it was targeted at the facility either indirectly or by physical infiltration.” The intelligence officials said it was indeed an explosion of explosives.
Although there is no direct dialogue between Iran and the United States during the talks in Vienna, the other participants in the agreement – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, chaired by the European Union – are engaged in a shuttle diplomacy. .
One working group focuses on how to lift economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, while another looks at how Iran can return to the conditions that set limits for enriched uranium and the centrifuges needed to manufacture it.
Iran has said its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
It also said that although it intends to resume the core activities prohibited under the agreement, it could easily return if the sanctions are lifted.
On Saturday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani celebrated the new centrifuges, shortening the time to enrich uranium, the fuel for nuclear bombs. But Mr. Rouhani also insisted that Iran’s efforts were not intended to produce weapons.
“If the West looks at the morals and beliefs that exist in our country, they will find that they do not have to worry and be sensitive about our core technology,” he said. Rouhani said in comments by the Iranian Mehr news agency.
The new centrifuges were inaugurated on what Iran calls its National Nuclear Day, an annual event to showcase the country’s progress in nuclear technology despite its economic isolation. The celebrations even have the debut of a music video featuring singing white-faced scientists standing next to centrifuges holding photos of colleagues who had been killed.
Mr. Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, was in Israel on Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s Secretary of Defense, Benny Gantz.
It was unclear whether they discussed the Natanz attack.
At the meeting, Mr. Gantz said: “We will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will safeguard the vital interests of the world and the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region and protect the State of Israel. ”
The United States and Israel have a history of secret cooperation, dating back to the administration of President George W. Bush, to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.
The best-known operation under this collaboration, codenamed “Olympic Games,” was a cyber-attack launched during the Obama administration that eliminated nearly 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz. The attack probably slowed down Iran’s enrichment activities by many months.
Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt, Lara Jakes, Gerry Mullany and Patrick Kingsley.