Sunday, April 18, 2021

ANALYSIS: Shadow war between Israel and Iran turns into open conflict

Israel's foreign intelligence service Mossad did it again.

After a Mossad team of about 100 men stole a large portion of Iran's secret nuclear archive from a warehouse in the suburbs of Tehran in the middle of the night in January 2018 and, after the Mossad sabotaged a new uranium facility at Natanz 10 months ago the plant was again targeted by the Mossad a week ago.

This time the electricity grid and cable infrastructure of the nuclear plant were targeted causing extensive damage to thousands of centrifuges according to the Iranians who were quick to blame Israel for the “ nuclear terror”.

The bomb that exploded in the underground facility in Natanz put the Islamic Republic's nuclear program back by at least nine months according to experts. Iran had purposely built Natanz's power plant underground, but this move failed to prevent the Mossad from blowing up the power grid.

European sources first claimed it had been a cyberattack, but sources in Iran later confirmed that a remote-controlled explosive device had been used to blow up Natanz's power grid.

The incident took place a day after Iran proudly announced it had started using two new types of centrifuges, the IR-5 and the IR-6 at Natanz.

Experts now think that the blackout destroyed mainly the thousands of old IR-1 centrifuges which are based on a Pakastani model.

The incident in Iran took place a few hours before U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin landed in Israel for talks with the Israeli government. READ MORE