WarSclerotic

Source: Israel said bracing for retaliation as Tehran points fingers over nuke site fire | The Times of Israel

Analysts say blast destroyed lab where Iran develops next generation centrifuges to speed up uranium enrichment; one source says Iran nuclear program set back two months

This Friday, July 3, 2020 satellite image from Planet Labs Inc. that has been annotated by experts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies shows a damaged building after a fire and explosion at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. (Planet Labs Inc., James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies via AP)

Israel is reportedly bracing for a possible Iranian retaliation as officials in Tehran suggested on Friday that a mystery fire and explosion at a top-secret nuclear complex could have been caused by an Israeli cyberattack.

An Israeli TV report Friday night said the attack “destroyed” a laboratory where Iran was developing advanced centrifuges for faster uranium enrichment, and a Kuwaiti report quoted an unnamed source assessing that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by two months.

Three Iranian officials told the Reuters news agency they believed the incident at the Natanz enrichment facility early Thursday was the result of a cyberattack, and two of them said Israel could have been behind it, but offered no evidence.

Asked about reports of the incident at a press conference Thursday evening, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed aside the question: “I don’t address these issues,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a press statement from his office in Jerusalem, July 2, 2020. (Screen capture: YouTube)

But Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, and a former head of IDF military intelligence, tweeted Friday that, “According to foreign sources, it appears that the prime minister focused this week on Iran rather than [his plan for West Bank] annexation. This is the policy I’ve been recommending in the last few weeks.”

Added Yadlin: “If Israel is accused by official sources then we need to be operationally prepared for the possibility of an Iranian reaction (through cyber, firing missiles from Syria or a terror attack overseas).”

Amos Yadlin (Flash90)

Officially, Iran reported an “accident” occurred Thursday at the Natanz nuclear complex in central Iran, saying there were no casualties or radioactive pollution. But top generals also said Iran would respond if the incident turned out to be a cyberattack.

“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.

Centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, November 5, 2019. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)

Israel’s Channel 13 TV military analyst Alon Ben-David said Friday evening that the attack hit “the facility where Iran develops more advanced centrifuges — what are meant to be the next stage of the nuclear program, to produce enriched uranium at a far faster rate. That facility yesterday took a substantial hit; the explosion destroyed this lab.

“Those were centrifuges that were supposed to be installed underground at the Natanz facility; they were intended to replace the old centrifuges and produce a lot more enriched uranium, a lot more quickly,” he aded. “They suffered a blow. It has to be assumed that at some stage, they will want to retaliate.”

View of the Eshkol Water Filtration Plant in northern Israel, on April 17, 2007. (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

Ben-David said Israel was “bracing” for an Iranian response, likely via a cyberattack. In an April cyberattack attributed by western intelligence officials to Iran, an attempt was made to increase chlorine levels in water flowing to residential Israeli areas.

Hours after the Natanz fire and reported explosion on Thursday, Iran’s state news agency IRNA published an editorial warning that “if there are signs of hostile countries crossing Iran’s red lines in any way, especially the Zionist regime (Israel) and the United States, Iran’s strategy to confront the new situation must be fundamentally reconsidered.”

IRNA also reported that unnamed Israeli social media accounts had claimed the Jewish state was responsible for the “sabotage attempts.”

It stressed that Iran had tried “to prevent escalations and unpredictable situations while defending its position and national interests.”

Natanz, located some 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Tehran, includes underground facilities buried under some 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete, which offers protection from airstrikes.

There was “no nuclear material (at the damaged warehouse) and no potential of pollution,” the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Behrouz Kamalvandi told state television.

This photo released on July 2, 2020, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, shows a building after it was damaged by a fire, at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility some 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP)

Kamalvandi said no radioactive material or personnel were present at the warehouse within the Natanz site in central Iran, one of the country’s main uranium enrichment plants.

He noted that the cause was being investigated, and said it had caused “some structural damage” without specifying the nature of the accident.

The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization released a photo purportedly from the site, showing a one-story building with a damaged roof, walls apparently blackened by fire and doors hanging off their hinges as if blown out from the inside.

The next stage of the nuclear program

Two US-based analysts who spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday, relying on released pictures and satellite images, identified the affected building as Natanz’s new Iran Centrifuge Assembly Center.

On Friday, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported Israel was responsible for two recent blasts at Iranian facilities — the one at Natanz, and another at a missile production site days earlier.

The Al-Jareeda daily cited an unnamed senior source as saying that an Israeli cyberattack caused a fire and explosion at Natanz.

According to the source, this was expected to set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by approximately two months.

The newspaper also reported that last Friday Israeli F-35 stealth fighter jets bombed a site located in the area of Parchin, which is believed to house a missile production complex — an area of particular concern for the Jewish state, in light of the large number and increasing sophistication of missiles and rockets in the arsenals of Iranian proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Fighter jets from the IAF’s second F-35 squadron, the Lions of the South, fly over southern Israel (IDF spokesperson)

Neither of these claims were confirmed by Israeli officials, who have been mum on the reports.

The reported Israeli strikes followed an alleged Iranian attempt to hack into Israel’s water infrastructure in April, an effort that was thwarted by Israeli cyber defenses, but if successful could have introduced dangerous levels of chlorine into the Israeli water supply and otherwise seriously interrupted the flow of water throughout the country.

Ultimately, the alleged Iranian cyberattack caused minimal issues, according to Israeli officials.

The alleged Israeli attacks also came amid an ongoing campaign of so-called maximum pressure by the United States in the form of crushing sanctions on Iran and Iranian officials.

The BBC’s Persian service said it received an email from a group identifying itself as the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claiming responsibility for the attack. The email was received prior to the announcement of the Natanz fire.

The group, which claimed to be dissident members of Iran’s security forces, had never been heard of before by Iran experts and the claim could not be immediately authenticated by The Associated Press.

The site of the fire corresponds to a newly opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. He said he relied on satellite images and a state TV program on the facility to locate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.

A fire has burned a building above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, though officials say it did not affect its centrifuge operation or cause any release of radiation. (AP graphic)

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was under construction and later built.

Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment about the analysts’ comments.

Last Friday, a large blast was felt in Tehran, apparently caused by an explosion at the Parchin military complex, which defense analysts believe hold an underground tunnel system and missile production facilities.

According to the al-Jareeda report on Friday, that explosion was caused by missiles dropped by a number of Israeli F-35 stealth fighter jets. The newspaper reported that the aircraft took off from southern Israel and carried out the bombing run without the need to refuel.

This Friday, June 26, 2020, photo combo from the European Commission’s Sentinel-2 satellite shows the site of an explosion, before, left, and after, right, that rattled Iran’s capital. Analysts say the blast came from an area in Tehran’s eastern mountains that hides a underground tunnel system and missile production sites. The explosion appears to have charred hundreds of meters of scrubland. (European Commission via AP)

The Fars news agency, which is close to the country’s ultra-conservatives, initially reported that Parchin blast was caused by “an industrial gas tank explosion” near a facility belonging to the defense ministry. It cited an “informed source” and said the site of the incident was not related to the military.

However, this was largely disregarded by defense analysts as satellite photographs of the Parchin military complex emerged showing large amounts of damage at the site.

Later, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Davood Abdi blamed the blast on a leaking gas that he did not identify and said no one was killed in the explosion.

Satellite photos of the area, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of meters (yards) of charred scrubland not seen in images of the area taken in the weeks ahead of the incident. The building near the char marks resembled the facility seen in the state TV footage.

The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran’s Khojir missile facility. The explosion appears to have struck a facility for the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, which makes solid-propellant rockets, said Fabian Hinz.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies identified Khojir as the “site of numerous tunnels, some suspected of use for arms assembly.” Large industrial buildings at the site visible from satellite photographs also suggest missile assembly being conducted there.

Iranian officials themselves also identified the site as being home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspects Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons. Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in “support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program” that largely halted in late 2003.

Western concerns over the Iranian atomic program led to sanctions and eventually to Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The US under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in May 2018, leading to a series of escalating attacks between Iran and the US, and to Tehran abandoning the deal’s production limits.

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report

“Arab media” is not the most reliable of sources when it comes to Israel…

… but here’s hoping it is accurate 🙂

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/arabic-media-israeli-cyberattack-struck-natanz-nuclear-facility-633775

The Kuwaiti paper argues that Iran has now lost 80% of its stock of this gas.

View of a damage building after a fire broke out at Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility, in Isfahan, Iran, July 2, 2020.

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper, which covers security incidents and sometimes alleges Israeli involvement, says that Israel carried out a cyber attack on the Natanz nuclear facility on Thursday. The incident has been downplayed by Iran but experts say that a sensitive warehouse that deals with centrifuges was damaged.

According to the report a source informed Al-Jarida that a cyber attack hit the facility. The report linked this to an earlier cyber attack on Israeli water infrastructure that Iran allegedly carried out and then another cyber attack on an Iranian port in May. It also links the Natanz cyber attack to the earlier Stuxnet computer worm attack in 2010.

These are coordinated sabotage operations, according to the newspaper. The Natanz incident explosion and another explosion near Parchin targeted UF6 gas storage that was used for uranium enrichment. This is uranium hexafluoride gas.

In November, 2019 Iran unveiled the production and injection of the gas into IR-6 centrifuges. These are the advanced centrifuges Iran has increased at Natanz. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI)’s Ali Akbar Salehi has spoken openly about the gas and the new centrifuges. Iran added around 30 of these IR-6 centrifuges to Natanz in November 2019, making at least 60 in total at the site.

The Kuwaiti paper argues that Iran has now lost 80% of its stock of this gas. “This is likely to be an electronic attack on the computer network that controls the storage compression tanks. Iran will need about two months to compensate for the gas that was lost.”

The Natanz explosion led to a “crack in the reactor building. Specialized groups went to the reactor to discover whether there was leakage in radioactive materials.” Iran says there was no leak at the site.

Whoopsie!

https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-nuclear-site-fire-centrifuge-facility

A fire and an explosion struck a centrifuge production plant above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility early Thursday, analysts said, one of the most-tightly guarded sites in all of the Islamic Republic after earlier acts of sabotage there.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sought to downplay the fire, calling it an “incident” that only affected an under-construction “industrial shed,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. However, both Kamalvandi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi rushed after the fire to Natanz, a facility earlier targeted by the Stuxnet computer virus and built underground to withstand enemy airstrikes.

The fire threatened to rekindle wider tensions across the Middle East, similar to the escalation in January after a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad and Tehran launched a retaliatory ballistic missile attack targeting American forces in Iraq.

While offering no cause for Thursday’s blaze, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published a commentary addressing the possibility of sabotage by enemy nations such as Israel and the U.S. following other recent explosions in the country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations,” the commentary said. But ”the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the U.S., means that strategy … should be revised.”

The fire began around 2 a.m. local time in the northwest corner of the Natanz compound in Iran’s central Isfahan province, according to data collected by a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite that tracks fires from space.

Images later released by Iranian state media show 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.

“There are physical and financial damages and we are investigating to assess,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television. “Furthermore, there has been no interruption in the work of the enrichment site. Thank God, the site is continuing its work as before.”

In Washington, the State Department said that U.S. officials were “monitoring reports of a fire at an Iranian nuclear facility.”

“This incident serves as another reminder of how the Iranian regime continues to prioritize its misguided nuclear program to the detriment of the Iranian people’s needs,” it said.

The site of the fire corresponds to a newly opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

Hinz said he relied on satellite images and a state TV program on the facility to locate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was under construction and later built.

Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment about the analysts’ comments. However, any damage to the facility would be a major setback, said Hinz, who called the fire “very, very suspicious.”

“It would delay the advancement of the centrifuge technology quite a bit at Natanz,” Hinz said. “Once you have done your research and development, you can’t undo that research and development. Targeting them would be very useful” for Iran’s adversaries.

Natanz, also known as the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, is among the sites now monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That deal saw Iran agree to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

The IAEA said in a statement it was aware of reports of the fire. “We currently anticipate no impact on the IAEA’s safeguards verification activities,” the Vienna-based agency said.

Natanz became a flashpoint for Western fears about Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, when satellite photos showed Iran building an underground facility at the site, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. In 2003, the IAEA visited Natanz, which Iran said would house centrifuges for its nuclear program, buried under some 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete.

Natanz today hosts the country’s main uranium enrichment facility. In its long underground halls, centrifuges rapidly spin uranium hexafluoride gas to enrich uranium. Currently, the IAEA says Iran enriches uranium to about 4.5% purity — above the terms of the nuclear deal but far below weapons-grade levels of 90%. Workers there also have conducted tests on advanced centrifuges, according to the IAEA.

The U.S. under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, setting up months of tensions between Tehran and Washington. Iran now is breaking all the production limits set by the deal, but still allows IAEA inspectors and cameras to watch its nuclear sites.

Natanz remains of particular concern to Tehran as it has been targeted for sabotage before. The Stuxnet malware, widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation, disrupted and destroyed centrifuges at Natanz amid the height of Western concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.

Satellite photos show an explosion last Friday that rattled Iran’s capital came from an area in its eastern mountains that analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites. Iran has blamed the blast on a gas leak in what it describes a “public area.”

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and former Iran analyst for the prime minister’s office, said he didn’t know if there was an active sabotage campaign targeting Tehran. However, he said the series of explosions in Iran feel like “more than a coincidence.”

“Theoretically speaking, Israel, the U.S. and others have an interest to stop this Iran nuclear clock or at least show Iran there’s a price in going that way,” he said. “If Iran won’t stop, we might see more accidents in Iran.”

Late Thursday, the BBC’s Persian service said it received an email prior to the announcement of the Natanz fire from a group identifying itself as the Cheetahs of the Homeland, claiming responsibility for an attack on the centrifuge production facility at Natanz. This group, which claimed to be dissident members of Iran’s security forces, had never been heard of before by Iran experts and the claim could not be immediately authenticated by the AP.

The only surprising thing in this article – (especially) given the source – is the lack of snide Israel bashing. 

Objective and fair journalism in relation to something about Israel (the Israeli military, no less). Golly gosh, fancy that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/30/just-like-google-maps-secret-israeli-military-unit-launches-radical-new-app/#3a06aed77c9b

“Imagine a tourist arriving in a foreign city,” the Israeli intel officer tells me, “the first thing they do is open Google Maps and look for a restaurant. Google helps them find a place. Helps them navigate. Helps them get there on time. We do the same.” Well, not exactly. The augmented reality mapping application Lieutenant-Colonel “N” is describing is designed to find hidden terrorists, not restaurants. “Mistakes can be fatal,” he tells me, “we need to get the right house on the right street.”

Welcome to the battlefield of the future—artificial intelligence, multi-source data fusion, augmented reality. Everything edge-based and real-time. Except this isn’t really a battlefield, as such. “What happened to us,” the officer tells me, “is that our enemies have adopted a technique to merge into urban areas populated with civilians, we need to unveil the enemy, precisely, and stop the threat.”

So, now you start to get the picture. Think Google Street View—except it’s not Google. And an augmented reality overlay that comes from the fusion of multiple sources of highly classified intelligence not big tech’s cloud servers And if that isn’t enough, there’s also AI running pattern analytics on prior enemy tactics, techniques and procedures to infer what a hidden enemy is likely to do next, in real time.

This is military augmented reality and it’s not unique—such systems are under development, gaming-style headsets overlaying friendlies and likely combatants, helping targeting and the avoidance of blue on blue. Israel’s new system is different, though. The augmented reality comes from the fusion of multiple intel sources, the intent is not to present ground troops with an advanced gaming-style view of the battlefield, but to use live data to infer where actual targets are hiding.

Picture this Street View lookalike again—no screenshots, I’m afraid, it’s classified. Arrows and graphics explain to a soldier on the ground why the third-floor apartment with the wrought iron balcony is deemed a hostile environment, why anyone exiting the building can be considered a combatant. The intent is to root out threats, but also to keep others safe, to avoid collateral damage. “We need to make sure we only target the aggressor and not any civilians,” Lt-Col “N” tells me.

Israel’s idea for this “intelligence saturated combat” has been a decade in the making. The new program sits within Unit 9900, the visual intelligence operation (think maps, satellite imagery, image analysis) within Aman, the country’s military intelligence directorate, and sister unit to the better known 8200 signals intelligence unit. Unit 9900 generated headlines a few years ago when it was reported that it was recruiting autistic teenagers for their unique analytical skillset.

As Lt-Col “N” describes the work of his team, “the development of 3D mapping that is as realistic as possible,” he continually refers back to the modern-day explorer’s Google Maps view of the world, that feeling of familiarity. Yes, the location might be strange, but the viewpoint is well known, understandable in absolute real-time. “We have to build something with that user experience,” he says, “our soldiers crossing the border for the first time must be familiar with the environment.”

This “intelligence saturated” viewpoint can be presented to the solider on a smartphone or tablet, all off the shelf and “mostly Android,” or streamed directly into their binoculars or weapons sights. “They don’t know where the intel comes from,” Lt-Col “N” tells me, “but it reaches their sights, their C2 systems in real time.” The officer stresses that all targeting decisions are taken by the soldier on the ground, not by the system itself, this is an aid, not a automated targeting system.

The challenges the new unit has overcome, I’m told, include distilling down this intel, “terabytes every day,” into what is useful and relevant, that’s the role of the AI, the pattern analytics. The window is short—soldiers are given five to ten seconds to decide on any action they take. They are trained in the field with the technology, their feedback hones the program itself, “what to develop further and what to ditch.”

Essentially, putting the complexity to one side, this is a 3D, photo-realistic map, “the backbone onto which we build our intel—preliminary and real time—to understand the area and what the enemy is doing in real time.” By mining data from previous combat experiences, the AI “recognizes patterns of enemy behaviour—and can understand where the enemy is and what they’re planning.” This is overlaid with real-time intel, including open-source data on the terrain and the environment.

There has been a lot of talk about the fusion of the cyber and physical domain in the last year, not least from Israel, which became the first country to mount a physical military response to a cyber attack. A few weeks later, the U.S. did the opposite. This new concept of an “intelligence saturated” battlefield can take the cyber domain and feed it directly to troops on the ground. Those same soldiers are heaped in sensors, everything feeding back to the central intelligence system.

Lt-Col “N” often refers to the “disappearing enemy.” He means the urban shadows where combatants and civilians blend together, disasters waiting to happen. Yes, this new style of AR combat is intended to sharpen responses, but also to avoid mistakes. The officer explains that the AR display provides enough information to let the soldier understand why a location has been deemed hostile—the final targeting decision is theirs, and if they don’t understand they won’t act the right way.

I’m told that this new program within Unit 9900 has become a development hotbed, learning its approach from industry. Inside the “joint lab” you’ll find intel, combat troops, cyber and comms, Israel’s Darpa equivalent, defense contractors, even start-ups. When something new is envisaged, it’s prototyped and given to ground troops to field test. Their feedback hones to capability or consigns it to the bin.

The military world has changed, Lt-Col “N” tells me, “we needed to imagine new methods of fighting—as much as possible we use tools created outside the defense industry. We take civilian and open-source as much as possible, we access research from all over the world to help us deliver state of the art products.”

I’m told that Israel has accepted that “mil-spec” is not always best—why not plug into the billions of investment dollars piling into mapping and AR and AI, repurposing those capabilities for this. “We keep the user experience as straightforward as possible… Google Maps is a good model—how you see the world as a tourist, when you know what you see and understand where you’re going.”

This new program is now ripe for international collaboration. “Our discussions with various countries fighting terror around the world show they’re facing the same threat, enemies hiding in urban environments. This concept brings together quick intel, enhanced by AI and connected to accurate mapping. That’s its innovation.”

No details on any other countries using the tech, of course, no specifics on intel sources—all highly classified. “I can tell you this is a real-time bridge between intel and soldiers—intel wants to keep their secrets, combat operators want that intel in real time.” Testing of the new capabilities started this year.

You can add this IDF program to the multitude of new AI, IoT and AR systems being procured and developed by military customers world-wide. The concept of real-time dissemination of live intel from multiple sources, right to a soldier’s C2 or sights is novel. The challenge here is that the soldier must remain the decision maker. If there’s ever any implication that targeting has been automated, then the military world will have changed and there will be no going back.

Never a truer word has been spoken…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb1EO0dWoAINEQ7?format=jpg&name=small

https://www.foxnews.com/world/under-construction-building-at-site-of-iranian-enrichment-facility-damaged-in-incident-report

TEHRAN, Iran — An “incident” damaged an under-construction building Thursday near Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, though it did not affect its centrifuge operations or cause any release of radiation, a spokesman said.

The affected building, described as an “industrial shed,” was above ground and not part of the enrichment facility itself, said Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted Kamalvandi as saying there was “no need for concern” over the incident.

However, there was no previously announced construction work at Natanz, a uranium enrichment center some 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. Natanz includes underground facilities buried under some 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete, which offers protection from airstrikes.

Natanz is among the sites now monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the incident.

Natanz, in Iran’s central Isfahan province, hosts the country’s main uranium enrichment facility. There, centrifuges rapidly spin uranium hexafluoride gas to enrich uranium. Currently, the IAEA says Iran enriches uranium to about 4.5% purity, above the terms of the nuclear deal, but far below weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The U.S. under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, setting up months of tensions between Tehran and Washington. Iran now is breaking all the production limits set by the deal, but still allows IAEA inspectors and cameras to watch its nuclear sites.

However, Natanz did become a point of controversy last year as Iranian officials refused to allow an IAEA inspector into the facility in October after allegedly testing positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates. Nitrates are a common fertilizer. However, when mixed with proper amounts of fuel, the material can become an explosive as powerful as TNT. Swab tests, common at airports and other secure facilities, can detect its presence on the skin or objects.

Israel is under attack – not only by terrorists who deny its basic right to exist, but also in the court of world opinion, which seeks to marginalize Israel as a human rights pariah that sanctions apartheid.

Rising in vigorous defense of the Jewish homeland in this landmark documentary, Alan Dershowitz, distinguished Harvard Law School professor and outspoken champion of human rights, presents evidence from leading diplomats, historians, legal experts and government officials on both sides of the political spectrum to make the definitive case for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.

Dershowitz argues forcefully that real peace in the Middle East can only occur when the Palestinians, Arabs, and their allies finally value the creation of a Palestinian homeland more than they oppose the presence of a Jewish state. Through incisive conversations with commentators ranging from Ambassador Dennis Ross and former Israel Supreme Court President Aharon Barak to then Opposition Leader Bibi Netanyahu and historians Michael Oren and Benny Morris, Dershowitz refutes deeply entrenched misperceptions about Israel’s history,

Jewish claims to a homeland, individual rights under Israel’s democratic system of government, the security fence, and military conduct in the face of terrorist attacks. He closes with a formidable warning that the greatest threat to Israel is also the greatest threat to international peace and security: Iran’s aggressive nuclear ambitions.ther.[137]

Source: US envoy: Military action against Iranian nuclear program ‘always on the table’ | The Times of Israel

Brian Hook, US pointman on Iran, says Trump willing to use force to prevent Tehran acquiring nukes; downplays fears annexation could harm Israel’s ties with Arab states

US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, attends a press briefing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, June 30, 2020. (Abir Sultan/Pool via AP)

The Trump administration’s envoy for Iran said Tuesday that the White House was willing to take military action against Tehran to prevent the regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Brian Hook, the US special representative for Iran, said during a visit to Jerusalem that “the military option is always on the table.”

“We’ve made very clear, the president has, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon,” Hook said in an interview with Channel 13.

“The Israeli people and the American people and the international community should know that President Trump will never allow them to have a nuclear weapon,” Hook said.

Hook is on a Middle East tour meeting with US allies to seek support for Washington’s demand of extending a 13-year UN weapons embargo on Iran set to expire in October. He visited the United Arab Emirates over the weekend.

In a meeting with Hook on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the US to move forward with its threat to reimpose “snapback” sanctions on Iran.

Netanyahu urged that “in response to repeated Iranian provocations and violations… it is time to implement, now, snapback sanctions. I don’t think we can afford to wait. We should not wait for Iran to start its breakout to a nuclear weapon because when that happens it will be too late for sanctions.”

If the UN Security Council fails to extend the embargo, the US would seek to trigger the broad array of “snapback” sanctions due to Iran’s violations of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The US abandoned that deal in 2018, triggering a series of Iranian violations in the ensuing years.

Hook told Channel 13 that the US would prefer to extend the arms embargo over sanctions.

“When you play by Iran’s rules, Iran wins, so we are making the national security case for extending the arms embargo that has been in place for 13 years,” Hook said.

Russia and China, which are both members of the UN Security Council, oppose the embargo, however. Their support, or abstention from a vote, would be needed to extend the embargo.

“I’m hopeful because Russia and China also would like to see a peaceful and stable Middle East,” Hook said.

He highlighted ties between Israel and Arab states, which have likely been strengthened by shared concern over threats from Iran, and downplayed fears that Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the West Bank could damage those ties.

“We very much like the steps that have been taken by a number of governments I think to deal with Iranian aggression and we would very much like to see the Palestinians come to the table. With respect to annexation, that is a decision for the Israeli government to make. We are working on building support for the peace vision,” Hook said.

In his meeting with Hook, Netanyahu warned that the Iranian regime “deliberately deceives the international community. It lies all the time. It lies on solemn pledges and commitments that it took before the international community. It continues its secret program to develop nuclear weapons. It continues its secret program to develop the means to deliver nuclear weapons.”

He vowed that Israel would “do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” and told Hook, “I know that’s your position as well.”

“This is a policy, Brian, that we have adopted as well. We are absolutely resolved to prevent Iran from entrenching itself militarily in our immediate vicinity. We take repeated and forceful military action against Iran and its proxies in Syria and elsewhere if necessary,” said Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, meets with US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook in Jerusalem on June 30, 2020. (Haim Tzach/GPO)

Iranian officials have suggested they could expel international inspectors monitoring the country’s nuclear program in response to an arms embargo extension, or even withdrawal entirely from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The UN arms embargo so far has stopped Iran from purchasing fighter jets, tanks, warships and other weaponry, but has failed to halt its smuggling of weapons into war zones in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to extend the embargo, warning that its expiration would risk the stability of the oil-rich region.

“Iran will hold a sword of Damocles over the economic stability of the Middle East, endangering nations like Russia and China that rely on stable energy prices,” Pompeo told the virtual session. Both countries on Tuesday spoke out against extending the embargo.

European allies of the United States have voiced support for the embargo but also oppose new sanctions, saying the bigger issue is Iran’s nuclear program.

US sanctions imposed since the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal have created intense financial pressure on Tehran that have led to sporadic anti-government protests, including nationwide demonstrations in November that Amnesty International says saw over 300 people killed. While the Trump administration has maintained it doesn’t seek to overthrow Iran’s government, its pressure campaign has exacerbated public anger against its Shiite theocracy.

Since Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran has broken all the accord’s production limits. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iranian nuclear activity as part of the deal, says Tehran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium continues to grow.

While not at weapons-grade levels, the growing stockpile and increased production shortens the one-year timeline analysts believe Iran would need to have enough material for a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue one. Iran long has denied seeking atomic bombs, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in “support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program” that largely halted in late 2003 following the US invasion of Iraq.