Israel does not intend to respond to an attack on an Israeli ship off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and wants to suppress tensions with Iran, a report said on Tuesday.
In the third attack of its kind in months, the MV Hyperion Ray – flying the flag of the Bahamas – came under a missile fire near the emirate of Fujairah on the coast of the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, but according to Hebrew media reports, officials in Jerusalem believe Iran is responsible.
The New York Times quoted an Israeli security official as saying that no retaliatory attack on an Iranian vessel was planned, as the Jewish state wanted to scale down the situation in the Persian Gulf.
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The report also quoted a U.S. official as saying Israel had asked Washington in recent days for help protecting the Hyperion Ray.
Hebrew media said the missile attack caused no injuries and very minor damage. According to Channel 12, the ship from Kuwait was on its way to the UAE.
A Hyperion Ray spokesman said there was no damage and the ship continued on its route.
The emirate of Fujairah is on the east coast of the UAE, on the Gulf of Oman, across the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz.
The report came as Iran threatened to retaliate against an attack on its Natanz nuclear site, blaming Israel.
Tehran and Jerusalem are engaged in a maritime shadow war, with both sides blaming the other for explosions on vessels, marking a new front in the conflict previously waged on land, by air and with alleged espionage and cyber attacks.
A suspicious boat from the stern of the Iranian ship ‘Saviz’ in the Red Sea in 2018. (Al Arabiya video screenshot / file)
The MV Saviz, an Iranian cargo ship that allegedly serves as a floating base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Yemen, was hit last Tuesday by an explosion, probably from a limp mine.
In recent months, at least two Israeli-owned cargo ships have been damaged in alleged Iranian attacks, one in the Gulf of Oman and the other while sailing to India.
Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility was hit by a suspected attack on Sunday. It is widely believed that Israel carried out the assault that damaged centrifuges, although he did not claim it.
A senior Iranian official has confirmed that the blast destroyed or damaged thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Alireza Zakani, the hard line of the Iranian parliament’s research center, referred to several thousand centrifuges damaged and destroyed in a state TV interview. However, no other official offered it and no images of the aftermath were released.
It appears that the remarks Israeli reports confirm that the damage was widespread and that Iran would have significant difficulty in restoring enrichment to previous levels in the coming months.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that if Iran determines that the Jewish state is behind the strike on Natanz, “then Israel will get its answer and see what stupid thing he did.”
The incident threatened to derail ongoing negotiations between Iran and world powers to save the shattered 2015 nuclear deal. The Biden government last week opened indirect talks with Iran over the deal.
Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility on April 7, 2021 (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)
After the Natanz attack, Iran said on Tuesday that it would enrich uranium to 60 percent purity, higher than the program had ever had. Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi quoted the state-run IRNA news agency as saying that Iran would increase its enrichment at its current rate of 20% in response to the weekend attack. This would put Iran a short technical step away from arms degree levels.
The broadcaster also quoted Araghchi as saying that Iran would install another 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz, without expanding it. Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful.
However, according to an Israeli television report, Iran said on Tuesday that Iran would enrich problems to these levels as Natanz remained out of commission.
The Natanz incident was initially described only as an eclipse in the electrical network that led to underground workshops and underground enrichment halls, but later Iranian officials began referring to it as an attack.
On Monday, an Iranian official admitted that the blast had removed the main system of electrical power from the plant and its backup. “From a technical point of view, the enemy’s plan was pretty good,” Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, head of the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, told Iranian state television on Monday.
“They thought about it and used their experts and planned the explosion so that the central power and the emergency cable would be damaged.”
According to reports, a bomb, which exploded at a distance, caused the disruption and damaged the plant.
The Iranian foreign ministry said it was damaging some of Iran’s first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, the workpiece of its nuclear program. A former Iranian revolutionary guard said on Tuesday that the assault caused a fire, while a civilian nuclear program spokesman called it a “possible explosion”.
A US official told the New York Times that Israel called the strike on Natanz retaliation for the recent attacks on Israeli-owned vessels.
Earlier Tuesday, a Channel 12 report said that Israel’s security establishment had a possible Iranian revenge attack, and that security levels in embassies around the world had been increased.
