Israel’s shadow war on nuclear facilities in the depth of Iranian territories is getting more complicated as Tehran announced last Wednesday it foiled a sabotage operation against one of its centrifuge manufacturing sites before Israeli sources confirmed the attack has caused considerable damage.
Quoting an Iranian familiar with the operation and a senior intelligence official, The New York Times said Thursday that the attack was carried out by a small quadcopter drone and it targeted one of the country’s main manufacturing centers for the production of centrifuges used at the two nuclear facilities, Fordow and Natanz.
According to the newspaper, the drone took off from inside Iran, from a location not far from the site and hit the structure. However, the person familiar with the attack did not know what, if any, damage had resulted.
Later, other media outlets hinted that Israel was behind the attack on the Iranian factory, which is believed to produce aluminum blades for use in Natanz and Fordow.
Channel 13 said Israel was behind the attack, describing it as the first operation carried out by Tel Aviv against Iran under the new government of Naftali Bennett.
The Jerusalem Post said that the sabotage operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities has caused major damage, despite Iranian denials.
It wrote that a 2017 Institute for Science and International Security report by founder and director David Alrbight and former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official Olli Heinonen stated that in 2011, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran revealed the location as one of Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing sites, near the city of Karaj, referred to as the TABA site.
In its article, the New York Times said that although no one claimed responsibility for the attack, the Iranian centrifuge factory, known as the Iran Centrifuge Technology Company, or TESA, was on a list of targets that Israel presented to the Trump administration early last year.
The newspaper said that among the targets presented to Trump’s administration at the time, were attacks on the uranium enrichment site at Natanz and the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November and an attack on the Natanz plant the following April, damaging a large number of centrifuges.
