Security cabinet set to meet next week amid growing tensions between Israel and Iran.
The Mossad was reportedly behind the attack at Natanz on Sunday that caused extensive damage to Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility.
The foreign minister’s comments on Monday morning appear to be building to a crescendo that could indicate Iran intends to retaliate.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Monday blamed Israel for Sunday’s incident at the Natanz nuclear facility.
An increasing number of Iranian officials have described the incident as sabotage or terrorism.
While Israeli media initially reported the incident was caused by a cyberattack, more recent reports say an explosive device was used.
Explosives were used to completely destroy the internal power system at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in an alleged Israel operation, two intelligence officials told The New York Times on Sunday night.
The explosion caused severe damage to the site and it could take at least nine months to restore production at Natanz, according to the officials.
While Israeli media initially reported that the alleged attack was a cyberattack, Channel 13 reported later on Sunday that the attack was caused by an explosive device placed at the site.
Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom expressed concerns about the leak about Israeli involvement to the Times, warning that it could impact Israel’s operational capability, in an interview with Army Radio on Monday.
“If indeed this thing is the result of an operation involving Israel, this leak is very serious,” said Yatom. “It is detrimental to the Israeli interest and the fight against Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. There are actions that must remain in the dark.”
“Once Israeli officials are quoted, it forces the Iranians to take revenge,” warned Yatom. “If the Iranians start investigating with the publication hovering over their heads that the people behind the attack are the Israelis or the Americans, they will leave no stone unturned. This has an impact on our operational capability.”
The attack was initially reported by Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi as an “accident” in the nuclear facility’s electricity distribution network, but the country’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, later confirmed that the incident was an attack.
While Kamalvandi stated at the time that no injuries or pollution were reported in the incident, the spokesman himself later injured his ankle and head while visiting the site after the incident, according to Iranian media.
An informed official in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry told the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency on Monday that the identity of the disruption’s cause had been found and that “necessary measures are being taken to arrest the main cause of the disruption in the electricity system of Natanz complex.”
ALTHOUGH MOST Iranian officials refrained from blaming a specific group or country for the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and MP Ali Haddad placed the blame for the incident on Israel.
Zarif warned that Iran would take revenge against Israel itself for the alleged attack, at a meeting of the Iranian parliament’s Commission of National Security and Foreign Policy on Monday, according to Iranian IRNA News.
“The political and military officials of the Zionist regime had explicitly stated that they would not allow progress in lifting the oppressive sanctions and now they think that they will achieve their goal – but the Zionists will get their answer in further nuclear progress,” said Zarif.
“Natanz will be stronger than ever with more advanced machines, and if they think our hand in negotiation is weak, this act will strengthen our position in the negotiations.”
“According to the Zionists, they want to take revenge on the Iranian people for their success in lifting the oppressive sanctions, but we will not allow it and we will take revenge for these actions from the Zionists themselves,” said Zarif, stressing the need for proper protection of facilities and nuclear scientists and the “need for attention… in order not to fall into the cunning trap designed by the Zionist regime.
“Yesterday the assassination of a nuclear scientist and today the attack on the Iranian ship Saviz and the sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility,” he tweeted.
Haddad called for deterrence and not restraint. “When commitment is translated as restraint, the Zionist enemy dares to strike more blows,” he said.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, stated on Monday that the affected centrifuges were only old, first-generation ones that would be replaced with advanced equipment, according to Iranian media.
“All the centrifuges that were shut down were of the IR-1 type, which will be replaced with advanced machines, and Iran will not fall into their cunning trap,” said the spokesman. “Of course, with this action, Israel tried to take revenge on the Iranian people for their patience and wise behavior. Iran’s behavior will be revenge against Israel, which will be done in its own time.”
“The regime has been carrying out some actions and some news leaks in the last few months. Its goals are clear and not hidden from the elites and intellectuals of Iran,” added Khatibzadeh.
“The foreign ministry has a responsibility to negotiate and Iran will respond to Israel through its channels. I am glad that there was no human or environmental damage, but it could have been a human catastrophe, so it is a crime against humanity, which is not far from the arrogant nature of Israel.”
Khatibzadeh added that “the foreign minister and our delegation are following up on this issue and actions will be announced today or tomorrow. Some actions will be taken in their undisclosed way [and] may never be said.”
THIS IS the second attack on Natanz that foreign reports have blamed on Israel within the past year, with an explosion and fire at the facility in July reportedly impacting Iran’s nuclear program significantly.
Iran is still nowhere near having recovered to the point where it had been before that July 2020 explosion in terms of its capacity for assembling new advanced centrifuges, The Jerusalem Post recently reported.
The most recent attack against Natanz took place a day after Iran began injecting uranium hexafluoride gas into advanced IR-6 and IR-5 centrifuges at Natanz and was revealed as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was visiting Israel.
Tensions are rising between Israel and Iran amid a number of attacks on Iranian and Israeli maritime vessels, with recent reports claiming that Israel has hit dozens of Iranian ships in recent years.
The report also comes as Iran meets with European and American officials to discuss a possible return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 between the Islamic Republic and world powers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned multiple times in the past week that Israel would defend itself against Iranian threats, stressing that Jerusalem would work to combat Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The prime minister called the security cabinet’s first meeting in two months next Sunday to discuss Iran amid increased tensions with Tehran.
Netanyahu, at an Independence Day event on Sunday with the heads of the security branches, said: “The struggle against Iran and its proxies and the Iranian armament efforts is a huge mission.”
In a possible reference to the reported Mossad operation taking the uranium enrichment machines off-line within hours of their launch, he said: “The situation that exists today will not necessarily be the situation that will exist tomorrow.”
As for voter turnout, we now know that the regime has set the stage for an “historic event”. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Gen. Hussein Salami says the “Supreme Guide” has ordered “an epoch-making turnout” that his force will help assemble.
[I]t is clear that the “Supreme Guide” will not tolerate the slightest deviation from the course he has set: a revolution that he claims is moving from strength to strength. “Today we are stronger and America is weaker,” he said recently. One of his ideological gurus, Dr. Hassan Abbasi, aka “Dr. Kissinger of Islam”, goes further: “America is the sunset power,” he says. “We are the sunrise power!”
At the end of the year, there was a Turkey in deep stages of cold-to-colder-war with the EU (in particular, with EU members Greece, Cyprus and France), Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, General Khalifa Haftar of Libya and the United States (over the S-400 dispute).
Not one of these state actors stepped back and appeased Erdoğan or changed policy in the face of Turkish hostilities.
There are also teachers who, possibly because they are scared, choose to bow their heads, give up teaching certain subjects and — when students shout anti-Semitic and anti-Western insults — to act as if they hear nothing. It has become almost impossible in most French high schools to talk about either Israel or the Holocaust.
Most journalists seem to prefer avoiding all discussion of the advance of radical Islam in France. They know that those who do so are immediately called “racists” or “Islamophobes” and are often threatened, prosecuted, sentenced to heavy fines or fired from their place of work.
On April 2, 2021, as part of its Frontline documentary series, the U.S.-based PBS television network published an article discussing an interview with Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani, leader of Syrian jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS). The article, titled “Syrian Militant and Former Al Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview with U.S. Journalist,” describes the interview with Al-Joulani, which was conducted by PBS correspondent Martin Smith in February 2021 in Idlib, Syria.[1]
The article includes two brief video clips in which Al-Joulani answers questions about the HTS designation as a terrorist organization and the group’s treatment of its rivals. In the clips, Al-Joulani responds in Arabic to questions Smith poses in English, asserting that HTS does not pose a threat to the U.S. or Europe and that the group’s terrorist designation was a political decision. He denies that HTS tortures prisoners, and invites international humanitarian organizations to inspect HTS prisons.
The talk of Syrians offering their bodies for sale in order to secure their livelihood is no longer just a rumor as a local radio station received a call from a number of people confirming that they are in fact selling their kidneys and urging buyers to hurry and take advantage of the opportunity and the low prices.
Syrians in the Netherlands are anxiously awaiting the formation of the new government, despite the fact that one of the major parties supporting them obtained good results in the parliamentary elections last month. Syrians fear that the largest party in the Netherlands wants to suggest amending the naturalization law in the country after the formation of the government.
Danish Minister of Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye, created a crisis in Denmark when he canceled the resident status from a host of Syrian refugees, which would blow up their future.
The case of the Syrian student Aya Abu Zahr has gone viral on social media in Denmark after receiving an official letter that freezes her residency and demands that she leave the country, only three months before graduating from high school.