After a Mossad team of about 100 men stole a large portion of Iran's secret nuclear archive from a warehouse in the suburbs of Tehran in the middle of the night in January 2018 and, after the Mossad sabotaged a new uranium facility at Natanz 10 months ago the plant was again targeted by the Mossad a week ago.
This time the electricity grid and cable infrastructure of the nuclear plant were targeted causing extensive damage to thousands of centrifuges according to the Iranians who were quick to blame Israel for the “ nuclear terror”.
The bomb that exploded in the underground facility in Natanz put the Islamic Republic's nuclear program back by at least nine months according to experts. Iran had purposely built Natanz's power plant underground, but this move failed to prevent the Mossad from blowing up the power grid.
European sources first claimed it had been a cyberattack, but sources in Iran later confirmed that a remote-controlled explosive device had been used to blow up Natanz's power grid.
The incident took place a day after Iran proudly announced it had started using two new types of centrifuges, the IR-5 and the IR-6 at Natanz.
The incident in Iran took place a few hours before U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin landed in Israel for talks with the Israeli government.
Austin’s body language suggested he felt embarrassed after Israel failed to inform the Biden Administration before the Mossad operation as was done in the past. Austin, however, kept his cool and didn’t say much about the blast in Natanz.
Fresh talks between the United States and Iran The US administration of President Joe Biden with the Ayatollahs in Tehran began a week before the sabotage in Natanz took place.
These indirect talks in Vienna aim to return both the United States (US) and Iran to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) between the Islamic Republic and six world powers.
The US withdrew from the agreement with Iran in 2018, after which ex-President Donald J. Trump introduced a range of new sanctions against Iran while restoring old sanctions that had been lifted by the Obama Administration.
This was the beginning of the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ campaign and Trump took these decisions after he had received intelligence about the archives the Mossad had stolen in Tehran.
After the US left the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, the nuclear deal, Iran also began to evade its obligations under the JCPOA and began enriching uranium to 20 percent.
The Islamic Republic now has a stockpile of over 1,000 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent while enrichment up to 3.5 percent was permitted under the JCPOA.
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