A fire and explosion hit a building above Natanz’s underground nuclear enrichment facility in Iran early Thursday, a site that US analysts identified as a new centrifuge production plant.
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, which has been the target of past sabotage campaigns.
Kamalvandi did not identify what damaged the building, although Natanz governor Ramazanali Ferdowsi said a “fire” had hit the site, according to a report by the semi-official Tasnim news agency. Authorities did not offer any cause for the fire, though Iran’s state news agency IRNA released a comment on the possibility of sabotage by enemy nations such as Israel and the United States after other recent explosions in the country.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far 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.”
A photograph later released by the atomic energy agency and video on state television showed a brick building with burn marks and its apparently destroyed roof. Debris on the floor and a door that looked ripped from the hinges suggested that an explosion accompanied the fire.
Data collected by a satellite from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested that the fire broke out around 2 am local time in the northwest corner of the Natanz complex. The flames from the fire were bright enough to be detected by the satellite from space.
“There is physical and financial damage and we are investigating to assess,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television. “Also, there has been no interruption to the enrichment site work. Thank goodness the site continues its work as before.”
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. He said he relied on satellite imagery and a state television program at the facility to locate the building, which is located in the northwest corner of Natanz.
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. Leading them would be very helpful” to Iran’s adversaries.
Construction work had not been previously announced at Natanz, a uranium enrichment center some 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the capital Tehran. Natanz includes underground facilities buried under about 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete, offering protection against air strikes.
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.
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.
Located in the central Isfahan province of Iran, Natanz houses the country’s main uranium enrichment facility. There, centrifuges rapidly spin uranium hexafluoride gas to enrich uranium. 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. It has 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.
However, Natanz became a point of controversy last year, as Iranian officials refused to allow an IAEA inspector to enter the facility in October after allegedly testing positive for traces of explosive nitrates. Nitrates are a common fertilizer. However, when mixed with the right amounts of fuel, the material can become as powerful an explosive as TNT. Swab tests, common in airports and other secure facilities, can detect their presence on skin or objects.
Natanz also remains of particular concern to Tehran as it has been the target of sabotage before. The Stuxnet computer virus, 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”.
Another explosion from a gas leak at a medical clinic in northern Tehran killed 19 people on Tuesday.
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 direction,” he said. “If Iran doesn’t stop, we could see more accidents in Iran.”
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.
.
