May 14, 2021
For the second time in the past year, opponents of the regime have struck inside the Natanz centrifuge complex, damaging the base’s electrical generating plant and destroying an unknown number of centrifuges.
The attack has incensed the Pasdaran more than previous attacks because it has prompted many people within the regime to question the capability of the Pasdaran. Natanz is the single most important installation for the Islamic Republic and yet the “enemy” has now successfully penetrated it twice in less than a year, making the Pasdaran, which is in charge of its security, look foolish.
First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri seemed to single out the Pasdaran in an angry harangue that avoiding citing the Pasdaran by name. “Nobody is ready to be responsible” for what happened, Jahangiri complained. “Which body is responsible to identify and prevent the country’s enemies from doing something in the country?” asked Jahangiri, without giving the answer: the Pasdaran. “Has anyone ever been held accountable or been held responsible or reprimanded for what the biggest enemy of this country is doing here?”
What’s more, Majlis Deputy Fereydun Abbasi, who is a former chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told reporters this was the fifth attack on Natanz, suggesting the Pasdaran have covered up previous attacks. Abbasi identified only one previous attack, saying “the enemy” had bombed an electrical tower near Natanz in 2011, but the tower did not collapse and thus power was not cut off. He was probably also counting as one of the attacks the 2010 Stuxnet episode launched by the US in which centrifuges were made to spin erratically until they broke down.
When power is not maintained to the centrifuges, they can spin out of control and be damaged or even destroyed.
The latest attack was carried out April 11. The official explanations were vague and imprecise, but it appeared that a bomb was planted in the complex’s power generating plant, which was built after the 2011 attack on the tower so that Natanz would no longer be dependent on power from outside the complex.
The announcement made right after the attack April 11 said there were no casualties and no damage to any centrifuges. It also said nothing about an explosion, referring only to a “blackout.” But in succeeding weeks, officials said they were replacing centrifuges that had been damaged by the power outage, making clear that the original announcement was not accurate.
The only reference the Iran Times could find to any numbers for damaged centrifuges was from Alireza Zakani, the head of the Majlis Research Center, who said in a TV interview that “several thousand centrifuges were damaged and destroyed.”
The previously acknowledged attack was last July, when an explosion started a fire that destroyed the building at Natanz where centrifuges are assembled.
It isn’t clear that all the centrifuges being replaced were damaged by the power outage. The regime may just be taking advantage of the situation to replace old IR-1 centrifuges with newer and more advanced models. This is barred by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which allows Iran to use only the IR-1 model.
But the regime may think that using the sabotage as an excuse will allow it to update its centrifuges with minimal objections from Europe. President Rohani said the new and more capable centrifuges were being installed as a response to the power plant bombing. He also announced that the new centrifuges would be used to enrich uranium to 60 percent, triple the 20 percent Iran had been enriching to. That is very close to weapons-grade.
Deputy Abbasi blamed the United States, Britain and Israel for the latest attack, although the actual bomber would have to be an Iranian with legal access to the site. Abbasi said most intelligence-gathering inside Iran is done by the Americans and British while it is the Israelis who then execute the actual sabotage. The White House denied that the US was involved in any way.
Iran later said the Iranian who brought the bomb to the power plant was 43-year-old Reza Karimi, whom it said fled the country before the bomb exploded. The announcement did not give any details about Karimi and did not explain how he got access to the site.
The announcement said Iran had asked Interpol to post a “red notice” seeking Karimi’s arrest. However, a month after that request was made, Interpol did not list Karimi on its website as a wanted man. Interpol is very leery of Iranian requests and rejects many of them as political.