By Ibrahim Dagher
NATANZ––On Sunday, April 11, 2021, Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility was the target of a sabotage cyberattack on its newest set of advanced centrifuges. Israeli forces have been suspected as being behind the attack, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not mentioned the incident directly via his latest press conference.
Netanyahu noted, though, that Israel, “will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel… Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression and terrorism.”
Furthermore, local Israeli news and media speculated that the cyberattack was the result of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, and its direct intentions to hinder Iran’s nuclear project. On Monday Iran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, officially accused Israel of being behind the attack. Zarif was quoted saying that Israel is attempting, “to take revenge on the Iranian people for their success in lifting the oppressive sanctions,” and promised Iran would, “take revenge on the Zionists themselves.”
These sentiments were further echoed by Iran’s letter to the United Nations Security Council, demanding action and justice for the damages. Another letter was also sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency which urged international condemnation of the attack. Saeed Khatibzadeh, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, threatened that the Iranian answer would be to “take revenge against Israel,” and that “Israel will receive its answer through its own path.”
Though such tensions are nothing new to these rival states. Ultimately, if Israel carried out this sabotage, it would line up in a long series of recent attacks against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, including the assassination of Iran’s head nuclear scientist as well as multiple attacks on Iranian shipping vehicles. Nor is this the first time that the Natanz specifically has been attacked: in 2010 an American-Israeli cyberattack disrupted the facility’s progress, and last July an explosion damaged multiple other centrifuges belonging to the site.
What remains unclear, though, is the extent of the damage that these new cyberattacks have caused to the facility. Israeli media reports have claimed that the cyberattack caused a blackout, ultimately derailing the facility’s power grid, though others have claimed that the attack shut down entire portions of the facility’s structures.
Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s civilian nuclear agency, has said that the attacks––not elaborating on their nature––have made no significant delays to Iran’s enrichment operations. On the other hand, US intelligence officials told the New York Times that the attack had completely destroyed the internal power system, and estimated that it would take approximately nine months to get the facility back to its enrichment process.
While the nature and effects of the attack have yet to be fully understood, what became clear to many was the influence this attack would have on the Biden administration and their attempts to re-enter into the 2015 Iran deal, after the Trump administration’s 2018 decision to withdraw.
Following the Natanz attack, Iran declared its intention to increase uranium enrichment levels to 60 percent, a daunting claim given that the former Iran deal. Which limited enrichment to a level of 3.67 percent. Comparatively, 90 percent enrichment is required for the development of an atomic bomb. Iranian diplomat Seyed Abbas Araghchi also added that Iran would be replacing thousands of its centrifuges, both attacked and currently functioning ones, with newer and more enhanced centrifuges capable of furthering enrichment levels to carry out its 60 percent figures.
Meanwhile, as these announcements are being made, Iranian officials are also in Vienna, negotiating with European powers regarding entering back into the Iran deal with the United States. Now with a negotiating advantage, Iran has come to the table maintaining their demand that the United States lift all sanctions against Iran. Shortly before resuming talks, Zarid remarked at a Tehran news conference that the Israeli attack was a “very bad gamble,” and that it had “strengthened [Iran’s] position.”
Such diplomatic troubles have not gone unnoticed by United States personnel either. Executive director of the Middle East Center, at the University of Pennsylvania, John Ghazvinian went so far as to say that, “the purpose of these latest Israel attacks on Iranian facilities…is not to ‘set back Iran’s nuclear program’ as will be widely claimed…it is to set back diplomacy.”
With the Biden administration attempting to reinstate the former Iran deal, the prospects for favorable American terms look to be diminishing in light of this week’s events. Whether the administration will be able to reach middle ground with Tehran is ultimately dependent on how talks proceed at Vienna as investigations concerning the Natanz cyberattack presses forward.
Ibrahim Dagher is a first-year Philosophy major and Political Science minor at UC Davis from the Central Valley. His interests include writing professional analytic philosophy and engaging in public speaking events.
Actually, I think it’s more immoral to use less force than necessary, than it is to use more. if you use less force, you kill off more of humanity in the long run, because you are merely protracting the struggle.
That was general Curtis LeMay he was right then and he’s right now.
Israel needs to stop screwing around and kick their ass ?
Curtis LeMay wanted to bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age. Nixon went for it after the 72 election and ended up with the same deal that was on the table in 68 when Nixon committed treason by undermining Johnson’s attempt to end the war before the election.
LeMay also wanted to bomb Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Certainly doing so would have cost more lives than died at the hands of Castro in the next fifty years.
LeMay was a hero in WWII. His firebombing of Tokyo made him a hero because US casualty estimates for the invasion of Japan were over 1 million. His air campaign over Japan still didn’t get the Japanese to surrender. The Atomic Bombs dropped on August 6 and 9, 1945 did that.
Yeah he was the original Duke Nukem. I sort of miss the old days when the attitude was kill them all and start over ?
Lesson is here: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
Spock: “Edith Keeler must die.”
As always, the secondary victims of Israeli aggression are Israelis (and Jews), and the same goes for Iranian citizens with their government’s aggression. Citizens not in power, or not in possession of shares of Israeli and USA arms and security companies.
Israel has nuclear power. Iran wants it too, and is being forced under pressure to get in a certain way. There is no chance that Iran would attack Israel with nuclear missiles as it would certainly provoke disproportionate retaliation.
The citizens mentioned don’t often realize that they are victims, similar to the middle-class-that’s-actually-working-class in the USA who thinks that the sun will come out tomorrow.
Should we given Chris and Alan above the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are not anti-Muslim? I know that Alan is not. But imagine if this was reversed, if both made similar comments about e.g. the Iranian security forces taking out a Mossad base…
And let’s take another look at Edith Keeler….https://medium.com/the-establishment/the-surprising-problem-with-star-treks-most-celebrated-episode-28a066bee829
That really is uncalled for and doesn’t make any sense.
Gee . . . thanks Todd.
A dog mauled a small child in Fresno. I wonder if Todd hates dogs. I know he does not.
I love dogs, but not sure about Fresno. However, I would not use bad logic – my opinion about “Edith Keeler must die”-ism – to justify an attack on this SJ Valley city!
Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha, yeah we can all rest assured.
Not sure why that’s an appropriate response. While I agree that we should not rest assured, I think that Todd is largely right that it is unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons in an attack on Israel. Part of the problem here is that nuclear weapons have been miscast as offensive weapons, when in fact they are at most strategic and defensive ones. The reason we have not seen a nuclear weapon used in 75-years since Nagasaki is that mutually assured destruction has largely rendered them impractical. The other problem I increasingly have is this notion that we can keep what is now essentially 70 year old technology out of the hands of various states – how long do we expect that policy is workable.
Iran is a terrorist state and has threatened the total destruction of Israel several times. Do you want the bomb in their hands?
So far . . . must be nice to have such a rosy view of the human spirit, all six billion of them. But I’m sure no one with a combination of religious idealism, megalomania, grandeur and suicidal ideation will pull the pin on a nuclear grenade offensively. Nah! After all, they are at most strategic and defensive weapons, Edith.
Actually I think mine is a cynical view. Old school balance of terror as a means to maintain peace.
…and with 72 virgins waiting for them in Jannah.
Not your place to judge ‘appropriateness’… nor would it be mine to judge the appropriateness of your response.
Wrong! They’re inherently offensive (multiple nuances of the term ‘offensive’)… the only time they’ve been used was in an offensive strategy, as an alternative to another offensive strategy… they were intended to be “shock and awe”, to avoid a landing on the Japanese home islands, which almost all accounts have predicted that military and civilian losses would have been much greater than the combined mortality and morbidity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… and it is extremely likely I’d not be posting this, had the US used ‘standard’ offensive strategies…
In the topic, a megalomaniac zealot would not think of ‘consequences’ in ordering a launch…
Actually, I think it is my place to judge appropriateness.
The problem is that if both sides have the weapon, a first strike means little because the other side can always respond. Therefore it is not an offensive weapon. Its only value is in establishing an ability to respond.
You know I don’t really think this is about the Iranian developing technology to make a nuclear bomb bomb.
I believe it is a way to keep the Iranians from developing more nuclear energy in order to mine cryptocurrency.
Strange belief, but you are entitled to it…
Iran is looking to use cryptocurrencies to obfuscate their paper trails and hide their tracks. Many countries have restricted Iran’s access to foreign currency and aid which puts downward pressure on Iran’s economy and ability to spend and receive outside of their own borders and allies.
The Iranians are placing mining pools next to those nuclear facilities.
We know.
On a world-superpower basis, yes. A nuke in the hands of an unstable regime or a terrorist? Not so much . . . . . [Borat]