Hours after it reported an “accident” at its Natanz nuclear complex, and said there were no casualties or radioactive pollution, Iran on Thursday warned that it would weigh its response to “hostile countries,” including Israel and the US, if they had crossed Iran’s “red lines in any way.”
The New York Times quoted an unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence official saying an explosion had taken place as the result of a bomb planted inside the facility. “The blast was caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility,” the Times quoted the official saying, and “destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility where new centrifuges… are balanced before they are put into operation.”
Asked about reports of the incident at a press conference Thursday evening, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed aside the question: “I don’t address these issues,” he said.
Iran initially downplayed Thursday morning’s events at Natanz, initially claiming vaguely there had been an unspecified “incident” and later acknowledging a fire.
Later it elaborated on what it still called an accident, and issued assurances that there was no danger of radioactive fallout, but it subsequently also issued a warning to its foes.
US-based analysts said the building, located above Iran’s underground Natanz enrichment facility, was a new centrifuge production plant and that it was hit by a fire and an explosion.
The site of the fire corresponds to a newly opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. He said he relied on satellite images and a state TV program on the facility to locate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.
David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was under construction and later built.
In Washington, the State Department said that US officials were “monitoring reports of a fire at an Iranian nuclear facility.” It added: “This incident serves as another reminder of how the Iranian regime continues to prioritize its misguided nuclear program to the detriment of the Iranian people’s needs.”
Hours after the announcement, Iran’s state news agency IRNA published an editorial warning that “if there are signs of hostile countries crossing Iran’s red lines in any way, especially the Zionist regime (Israel) and the United States, Iran’s strategy to confront the new situation must be fundamentally reconsidered.”
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