Natanz (Kashan)

Iran's state-run television reported that the country informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will start enriching uranium to 60 percent purity from 13 April 2021. Tehran had been enriching uranium to 20 percent. Iran on 11 April 2021 described a "blackout" at its underground Natanz atomic facility as an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, stopped short of directly blaming anyone for the incident. Details remained few about what happened at the facility, which initially was described as a blackout caused by the electrical grid feeding the site.

Iranian authorities named 43-year-old Reza Karimi as the perpetrator behind the nuclear plant attack, saying he had fled the country. Iran charged that its arch-enemy Israel was behind an attack on its Natanz uranium enrichment plant and vowed it would take "revenge" and ramp up its nuclear activities. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said a "small explosion" had hit the plant's electricity distribution center. The Natanz attack reportedly hit a facility 50 meters underground, and destroyed most of the facility. The explosion completely destroyed the internal power system at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility in an alleged Israel operation, two intelligence officials told The New York Times on 11 April 2021. The attack was reportedly carried out through a remotely detonated device smuggled into the facility. Alireza Zakani, head of Iran's Parliament Research Center, announced in a television interview on Tuesday that "thousands of centrifuges" had been destroyed, damaging "most of the enrichment facilities" in the Natanz attack. According to The Wall Street Journal, destruction of the power supply could have damaged or destroyed centrifuges by causing them to slow down too rapidly.

Israeli public radio cited intelligence sources as saying that Israel’s Mossad spy agency carried out a cyber-attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Kan Radio’s report, which cited unnamed sources, said the attack on Natanz was “an Israeli cyber-attack in which the Mossad was involved… [and] the damage to the Iranian facility is greater than reported” by Tehran.Many Israeli media outlets offered the same assessment that a cyberattack darkened Natanz and damaged a facility that is home to sensitive centrifuges. While the reports offered no sourcing for the evaluation, Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

If Israel caused the blackout, it further heightened tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. It also complicates efforts by the US, Israel’s main security partner, to re-enter the atomic accord aimed at limiting Tehran’s program so it can’t pursue a nuclear weapon. As news of the blackout emerged, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin landed Sunday in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Khatibzadeh vowed that Iran's response to the Natanz incident would be to take "revenge on the Zionist regime" when and where Tehran chooses. "Of course the Zionist regime, with this action, tried to take revenge on the people of Iran for their patience and wise attitude regarding the lifting of sanctions."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said 10 April 2021 his country had launched a new generation of centrifuges that are used for uranium enrichment. Rouhani's statement came at an event attended by engineers involved in nuclear development. He said Iran had started operating new high-performance centrifuges at a nuclear facility in Natanz. He added that Iran would start technical tests of another type of centrifuge. He also said Iran would not let anyone in the world say its nuclear development is unlawful. Indirect talks between the United States and Iran, brokered by the European Union and other relevant countries, started in April. The administration of US President Joe Biden hoped to rejoin the nuclear deal which his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from. Iran was demanding all sanctions that were re-imposed by the Trump administration be lifted, but the United States refused. Iran was believed to be putting pressure on the United States by showing its determination to step up the country's nuclear development activity.

On 06 April 2021 the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi announced that the organization has begun the mechanical test of its new-generation IR-9 centrifuges. In an interview with ISNA on Tuesday, Kamalvandi said, "One of the advances made in the field of uranium enrichment is the beginning of the mechanical test of the IR-9 centrifuge". He added "The output of the IR-9 centrifuge can stand at 50 SWUs. This machine is one of the most important completely native centrifuges in Iran which manufactures and operates with new standard methods". Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Tehran and major global powers in 2015, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium only using first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at the underground fuel enrichment plant (FEP) at Natanz. But in 2020 Iran began adding more advanced centrifuges that can enrich much faster than the IR-1.

The cancellation of the nuclear deal gave Iran the opportunity to enrich uranium at its factories in Natanz and Fordo, Tasnim News Agency reported 21 September 2018, citing representative of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Behrouz Kamalundi. "Now there are about six thousand centrifuges in Natanz. At the Fordo plant, enrichment is not being carried out, but in the event of Iran's withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the relevant decision of the management, we will again launch the uranium-processing plant at Fordo," he said. However, he stressed that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ordered compliance with the terms of the JCPOA.

During a press conference by the representative office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran held in Washington, DC in mid-August 2002, the existence of a secret nuclear facility at Natanz was revealed. Israeli military intelligence has also referred to the site as "Kashan."

Natanz is located between Isfahan and Kashan in central Iran. The facility is reportedly 100 miles north of Esfahan, and is located in old Kashan-Natanz, near a village called Deh-Zireh, itself located about 25 miles southeast of Kashan, and falls under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Office of Kashan.

Officially a project aimed at the eradication of deserts, construction on the facility was said to have begun in 2000 and was being carried out by the Jahad-e Towse'eh and Towese'eh-Sakhteman construction companies. As of mid-2002, construction was not due to be completed until 2003, at which point, installation of the technical facilities would begin.

According to the NCRI, as of August 2002, the project had cost 95 billion toumans. Funding had been provided by the Supreme National Security Council and was outside of the supervisory purview of the Budget and Planning Organization. A front company had specifically been created for project. Named Kala-Electric, whose headquarters were located in Tehran, it met all requirements for the project's facilities and equipment and was run by Davood Aqajani, who was also the managing director for the Natanz heavy water project. Officials from the company reportedly made a number of trips to both China and India in 2001. The head of Atomic Enery Agency of Iran, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, reportedly pays visits to the site every months in order to oversee progress on the facility.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on 12 December 2002 released an issue brief expressing concern that Iran was trying to develop "the capability to make separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the two main nuclear explosive materials." ISIS acquired satellite imagery of a site in Natanz, about 40 kilometers southeast of Kashan, which could have been a gas-centrifuge facility for uranium enrichment.

Iran strongly rejected the allegations and reiterated that the two plants were intended to generate electricity. "In the next 20 years, Iran has to produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity by nuclear plants and the launch of these two centers are aimed at producing necessary fuel for these plants," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said.

Tehran later invited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to travel to Iran to inspect both facilities, an offer which has been accepted. "We have been in contacts with the IAEA over these two centers and we will officially invite them for inspections since the agency must inspect them and carry out their necessary planning and supervision before the centers are put into operation," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said.

On 10 February 2003 Gholamreza Aqazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), said that Iran had started an ambitious nuclear energy program and was poised to begin processing uranium. He said that the uranium ore processing plant should come on line soon in the central city of Isfahan and preliminary work had begun on a uranium enrichment plant. Aqazadeh said the first steps had been taken to build an enrichment plant, "but we still have a long way to go to have this plant come onstream." Aqazadeh said the enrichment plant would be built in Kashan (at Natanz) in central Iran. The fuel would come from another facility in Isfahan, where a Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) was close to inauguration.

The IAEA's inspectors visited Iran on 21 February 2003 to look at nuclear facilities under construction there. "We will be looking at facilities not even completed yet that are not formally under safeguards," as chief IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky put it. The visit was the "first step in a process of many visits to understand the architecture of the place and to design the most effective monitoring regime for that facility." American officials believed new nuclear facilities in Iran could be used to make nuclear weapons.

IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei visited the site on 21 February 2003, in the first visit by the UN chartered IAEA. During this visit, the Director General was informed by Iran of its uranium enrichment plant (PFEP) nearing completion of construction, and a large commercial-scale fuel enrichment plant (FEP) also under construction.

It was reported on 26 August 2003, that the IAEA had found particles of highly enriched uranium in environmental samples taken at Natanz. These findings were released in a report whose distribution was initially restricted to the organization's 35-nation Board of Governors.

During the discussions, which took place in August 2004, Iran repeated that, although the design drawings of a P-2 centrifuge had been acquired in 1995, no work on P-2 centrifuges was carried out until early 2002 when, according to Iran, the IAEO management decided that "work on a modified P-2 machine based on a sub-critical rotor design would not hurt," and, in March 2002, a contract to study the mechanical properties of the P-2 centrifuge was signed with a small private company. Iran stated that no feasibility or other preliminary studies or experiments were conducted by Iran during the period between 1995 and 2002.

Iranian officials also stated that, in spite of frequent contacts between 1995 and 1999 on P-1 centrifuge issues with the intermediaries (who, according to Iran, had provided both the P-1 and P-2 drawings), the topic of P-2 centrifuges was not addressed at all in those meetings nor in the course of making any other foreign contacts. Iran attributed this to the fact that a decision had been made to concentrate on the P-1 centrifuge enrichment program, and that, in addition, the IAEO was undergoing senior management and organizational changes during that period of time.

On 9 April 2007, in a speech at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran has now developed the capability to produce enriched uranium which is needed to make nuclear fuel. He claimed that Iran had begun production of enriched uranium using 3,000 centrifuges. At the gathering he said, "As of today, Iran is among the countries which produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale."

A fire and an explosion struck a building above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility early on 25 June 2020. Natanz governor Ramazanali Ferdowsi said a “fire” had struck the site, according to a report by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Authorities offered no cause for the blaze, though Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published a commentary addressing the possibility of sabotage by enemy nations such as Israel and the US following other recent explosions in the country. Data collected by a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite suggested the fire broke out around 2 AM local time in the northwest corner of the Natanz compound. Flames from the blaze were bright enough to be detected by the satellite from space.

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.

The fire the Natanz nuclear facility caused significant damage that could slow the development of advanced centrifuges, an Iranian nuclear official said on 05 July 2020. No one was hurt in the mysterious blaze at the site, said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation. Iran's top security body said on 03 July 2020 the cause of the fire at the facility had been determined and would be announced later, however, specific details have yet to be released.

Some Iranian officials reportedly said it may have been caused by cyber-sabotage and one warned Tehran would retaliate against any country carrying out such attacks. "The incident could slow down the development and production of advanced centrifuges in the medium term," Kamalvandi was quoted as saying by Iran's state news agency IRNA. "Iran will replace the damaged building with a bigger one that has more advanced equipment. The incident has caused significant damage, but there were no casualties."

Nearly three-quarters of Iran’s main centrifuge assembly hall was destroyed by the explosion there, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) president David Albright told The Jerusalem Post 09 Jul 2020. Albright indicated that this latest revelation is based on two new satellite overviews showing a much fuller picture than footage that was released last weekend, indicating that the vast majority of the centrifuge assembly hall was wiped out. Albright estimated that the facility would take at least a year to rebuild, but likely longer since it took six years, from 2012-2018, to build it and become operational the first time.

According to the report by ISIS, “High-resolution commercial satellite imagery... shows that the Iran Centrifuge Assembly Center (ICAC) at the Natanz Enrichment Site has suffered significant, extensive, and likely irreparable damage to its main assembly hall section.” Further, the report says, “This new facility, inaugurated in 2018, was critical to the mass production of advanced centrifuges, in particular the assembly of rotor assemblies, the rapidly spinning part of the centrifuge and its most crucial component.”

In mid-2008, Iran confirmed that the Natanz nuclear plant had been subjected to a sabotage operation, and it was later known that the operation that disabled thousands of centrifuges was carried out with a new digital weapon called “Stuxnet” in the form of a virus that was planted inside the facility.

The death of Dutch engineer Eric van Saben in a motorcycle accident on January 16, 2009 on the Sharjah-Dubai Road did not raise any criminal suspicion at the time. His wife was suspicious of his hasty and confused departure from Tehran about two weeks before the terrible accident in which he broke his neck, but she did not suspect that the accident might have been planned.

Van Saben's Iranian wife and his Dutch family were completely unaware of his double life, which he was keen to hide, but his sudden death raised questions even among officials of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and the Dutch General Intelligence Service (AIVD). Some of them doubted that Van Saben “paid a heavy price” for his secret activities in Iran, which were sponsored by the CIA and the Israeli Mossad , and with the help of the Dutch intelligence itself.

The 2024 investigative report conducted by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant claims that Van Saben, who worked for the TTS company in Dubai, which was transporting heavy equipment to Iran, was recruited by Dutch intelligence and was part of an operation... A secret operation carried out by the CIA and the Israeli Mossad targeted the Natanz station, where the main uranium enrichment operations take place.

In the investigation, which continued for two years, the newspaper relied on information obtained from 43 people, including 19 from the intelligence agencies “AIVD” (the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) and “MIVD” (the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service). In addition to Mossad and CIA officials, his wife and relatives.

For many years, the method of transmitting the virus (malware) into the Natanz facility remained unknown. For security precautions, the Iranian nuclear complex is not connected to any Internet communications with the outside world, and in 2019, the Dutch newspaper “De Volkskrant” revealed, in conjunction with the American news site “Yahoo News,” that “CIA and Mossad officials and officials from the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service” AIVD coordinated this operation.

It is likely that engineer Eric van Saben's activity in shipping heavy equipment to Iran and installing it through the heavy equipment shipping company "TTS" in Dubai caught their attention, as Dutch intelligence recruited him. The investigation does not confirm that Van Saben knew that the equipment he was transporting to the Natanz facility contained the virus, and that fact disappeared with his death, which seemed mysterious, but the sources on which the investigation relied gather that he was aware of the purpose of the operation, which was to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.

The newspaper indicates that Van Saben's death meant that the Americans and Israelis no longer needed his services after he planted the virus, which could later be spread and controlled, and it is also possible that the engineer was no longer able to continue his work in the reactor.

In December 2008, the 36-year-old engineer left Dubai for Tehran for 10 days with his Iranian wife to visit her family, but after only one day the man - whom his colleagues described as accustomed to working in stressful situations and under great pressure - returned to his home. Dubai suddenly and urgently, and his wife said, “He was very upset and insisted on leaving immediately.” He then died in the accident between Dubai and Sharjah.

Sources indicate that Dutch intelligence recruited Eric van Saben in 2005, to then work for the international transportation company “TTS” in Dubai, and then he moved to the Al Jaber Group before returning again to “TTS.” These sources and colleagues confirm His predecessors said that while he was at the transport company, he “was in the ideal position to deliver specialized Western equipment to Iran.”

According to the investigation, it was common at the time for Dubai to be used to evade Western sanctions into Iran. “We did business in Iran at a time when this was not officially permitted,” says Peter Knapp, director of TTS, and his company supplied Iran. With equipment and spare parts for the oil and gas industry, he said. Knapp was not aware of the secret activities associated with his Dutch employee's intelligence work, but he was "convinced that Erik could have done it. He was an adventurer who traveled a lot, and was not afraid to try things," he said.

According to the investigation, in 2007, Van Saben was able to carry out the risky mission at the high-security nuclear plant, located 300 kilometers south of the capital, Tehran, and there he installed equipment carrying malware that dealt a painful blow to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Nearly a thousand centrifuges necessary for uranium enrichment malfunctioned, which delayed the Iranian nuclear program for several years, according to Western estimates.

Iran had begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant, Ahmadinejad said, defying the West which fears Tehran is trying to build nuclear bombs. The secret operation, which was carried out in cooperation with the CIA and the Israeli Mossad, was preceded by years of preparation, including work on developing the virus, which cost more than a billion dollars.

US Presidents George W. Bush (2001-2009) and Barack Obama (2009-2017) gave permission to use digital weapons in Iran, according to the New York Times in a report, and the goal was to destroy centrifuges, without Iran realizing where the sabotage came from. The malware effectively caused the centrifuge valves to close at a predetermined time, and was later modified by the Americans and Israelis in the spring of 2009. The latest version was able to spread automatically, and no longer required the use of a human element to deliver it to the station's technical system.

The newspaper indicated that in the period preceding the decisive phase of the operation, an unannounced meeting was held at the headquarters of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service in the Scheveningen suburb of The Hague. Engineer Van Saben was actually nominated by Dutch General Intelligence to carry out the operation.

Dutch intelligence sources say that the director of the CIA at the time, Michael Hayden, who was responsible for the Stuxnet operation in the United States, held a meeting at the headquarters of the Dutch military intelligence service in 2006, and Hayden spoke about a “top-secret mission” that the agency was carrying out without specifying it precisely.

One source states that Hayden said it was necessary to introduce “water pumps” to the Iranian nuclear complex, which included a “technical breakthrough” that would ensure - once the water pumps were installed - that Iran’s centrifuges “would malfunction further,” Hayden said - according to Source: This technology cost between one and two billion dollars to develop.

The talk was about sabotaging the technical system of the Iranian nuclear complex in Natanz. The Iranians built their nuclear facility under a thick layer of concrete underground, and without internet connection to the outside world for fear of cyber attacks. For this reason, the Americans and Israelis needed someone who could introduce the virus into the technical system of the reactor, and they found what they were looking for in the Dutch engineer who was recruited by his country’s intelligence.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden did not deny the aforementioned meeting with his Dutch counterpart, but noted that he could not confirm whether the subversive virus actually entered the Iranian complex via the supplied water pumps. Meanwhile, former Dutch military intelligence director Peter Kobilens, who met with Hayden, said when asked that his “memory is not active” to recall what took place in the conversation.

The Dutch investigation confirmed that the CIA director did not tell his Dutch counterpart that the water pumps contained the Stuxnet virus, and the Dutch intelligence officers involved in the operation also did not know that the virus was hidden in the equipment that went to the Natanz facility. Dutch intelligence was aware that it was participating in an operation to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program, but the Dutch General Intelligence Service never knew that the Americans and Israelis wanted to use a new digital weapon for this purpose, and they installed it by Dutch agent Erik van Saben. An employee of the General Intelligence and Security Service says, "We realized this later. We should have asked more questions." For his part, an intelligence source commented to the newspaper, saying, "The Americans took advantage of us. It was an act of war."

In 2019, an internal investigation of the Dutch General Intelligence Service into the matter concluded that “the chain of evidence is incomplete,” and it does not appear in the agency’s archives that agent Van Saben was the one who planted the “Stuxnet” virus at the Natanz station, or that the equipment he brought to Natanz contained On the devastating virus.

Sixteen years after the operation, the Dutch General Intelligence Service did not disclose any details of the operation, and said in its response to questions from the newspaper “De Volkskrant”: “We never issue statements about matters that could reveal something about our working methods.” The CIA also did not respond to questions about the water pumps and did not inform their Dutch counterparts of the full plan.

The investigation claims that Dutch political officials knew absolutely nothing about the role of the intelligence service in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear program, including then Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who responded to the newspaper by saying, “I am always reluctant to look back when I was prime minister. In addition, "I must maintain confidentiality about this matter, not only during my time as Prime Minister, but also after that."

When the Stuxnet virus was launched in 2007, there were no international agreements or rules for the use of disruptive viruses, and the United Nations did not set (non-legally binding) standards for operating rules in the digital field until 2015. According to the United Nations, attacking vital infrastructure is not allowed.

Iran has accused Israel more than once of sabotaging the centrifuges at the Natanz facility, most recently in April 2021, when it announced that the nuclear facility had been subjected to a “nuclear terrorist act.” It also accused it of carrying out bombings and assassinations of scientists in the nuclear field.