Pompeo urges the United Nations to extend the arms embargo to Iran
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took advantage of a UN report confirming that Iranian weapons were used to attack Saudi Arabia in September and that they were part of a weapons shipment seized months ago off the coast of Yemen; State Department correspondent Rich Edson reports.
A fire and explosion hit a centrifuge production plant above Natanz’s underground nuclear enrichment facility in Iran on Thursday morning, analysts said, one of the best-protected sites in the entire Islamic Republic after the first acts of sabotage there.
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization tried to minimize the fire, calling it an “incident” that only affected one “industrial shed” under construction, spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. However, both Kamalvandi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi rushed after the Natanz fire, a facility previously attacked by the Stuxnet computer virus and built underground to resist enemy air strikes.
The fire threatened to reignite broader tensions across the Middle East, similar to the escalation in January after a U.S. drone attack killed an Iranian general in Baghdad and Tehran launched a retaliatory ballistic missile attack on American forces in Iraq.
Although it did not offer any cause for Thursday’s fire, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published a comment addressing the possibility of sabotage by enemy nations like Israel and the United States after other recent explosions in the country.
“Until now, the Islamic Republic of Iran has tried to avoid escalating crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations,” the comment said. But “the crossing of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s red lines by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the United States, means that the strategy … should be reviewed.”
The fire started around 2 am local time in the northwest corner of the Natanz complex in the central Isfahan province of Iran, according to data collected by a satellite from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that tracks fires from the space.
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Images released later by Iranian state media show a two-story brick building with scorched marks and its roof apparently destroyed. Debris on the floor and a door that looked ripped from the hinges suggested that an explosion accompanied the fire.
“There is physical and financial damage and we are investigating to assess,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television. “Also, there has been no disruption to the enrichment site work. Thank God the site continues its work as before. “
In Washington, the State Department said US officials were “monitoring reports of a fire at an Iranian nuclear facility.”
“This incident serves as another reminder of how the Iranian regime continues to prioritize its wrong nuclear program to the detriment of the needs of the Iranian people,” he said.
The site of the fire corresponds to a recently opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, California.
Hinz said he relied on satellite imagery and a state television program on premises to locate the building, which is located in the northwest corner of Natanz.
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Centrifugation machines at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, file)
David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said that the fire hit the production facilities. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite images while it was under construction and then built.
Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment on the analysts’ comments. However, any damage to the facility would be a major setback, said Hinz, who called the fire “very, very suspicious.”
“It would slow down the advancement of centrifugal technology in Natanz quite a bit,” Hinz said. “Once you have done your research and development, you cannot undo that research and development. Addressing them would be very helpful ”for Iran’s adversaries.
Natanz, also known as the Fuel Enrichment Pilot Plant, is among the sites now monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. In that agreement, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
The IAEA said in a statement that it was aware of reports of the fire. “We currently do not anticipate any impact on IAEA safeguards verification activities,” the Vienna-based agency said.
Natanz became a flashpoint for Western fears about Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, when satellite photos showed Iran building an underground facility at the site, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. In 2003, the IAEA visited Natanz, which Iran said would house centrifuges for its nuclear program, buried under about 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete.
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Natanz today houses the country’s main uranium enrichment facility. In their long underground rooms, centrifuges rapidly spin uranium hexafluoride gas to enrich it. Currently, the IAEA says Iran enriches uranium to about 4.5% purity, above the terms of the nuclear deal, but well below the 90% weapon grade levels. Workers have also conducted tests on advanced centrifuges, according to the IAEA.
The United States under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, creating months of tension between Tehran and Washington. Iran is now breaking all production limits set by the agreement, but it still allows IAEA inspectors and chambers to monitor its nuclear sites.
Natanz remains a matter of particular concern to Tehran as it has been the target of sabotage before. The Stuxnet malware, widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation, disrupted and destroyed the centrifuges at Natanz amid Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.
Satellite photos show an explosion last Friday that rocked Iran’s capital from an area in its eastern mountains that analysts believe is hiding a system of underground tunnels and missile production sites. Iran attributed the explosion to a gas leak in what it describes as a “public area”.
Yoel Guzansky, a member of the Israel Institute for National Security Studies and a former Iran analyst for the prime minister’s office, said he did not know if there was an active sabotage campaign targeting Tehran. However, he said the series of explosions in Iran feels like “more than a coincidence.”
“Theoretically speaking, Israel, the United States and others have an interest in stopping this Iran nuclear clock or at least showing Iran that there is a price in that regard,” he said. “If Iran doesn’t stop, we could see more accidents in Iran.”
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On Thursday night, the Persian BBC service said it received an email prior to the announcement of the Natanz fire from a group identifying themselves as the Cheetahs of the Fatherland, claiming responsibility for an attack on the production facility of centrifuges in Natanz. This group, which claimed to be dissident members of Iran’s security forces, had never been heard by Iranian experts and the claim could not be immediately authenticated by the AP.
