Seemingly timed to disrupt ongoing P5+1 nuclear talks in Vienna, a cyberattack against Natanz has caused a power failure and forced the Iranian uranium enrichment facility to temporarily stop operating.
Israeli officials have not commented directly yet, but Israeli public radio reported that this cyberattack was the work of Mossad. That was how Iran figured it too, calling it an act of “nuclear terrorism.”
This is not the first attempt at cyber sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program. There were no casualties but Iran reported severe damage to the site. Iranian officials say they may retaliate.
While such sabotage acts are nominally meant to curb Iran’s advancement of its civilian program, in the past they’ve had the opposite effect, and retaliation often involves Iran escalating its program, replacing broken equipment with more and better equipment, and ending up with an even bigger enrichment enterprise.
The most likely way to get Iran to scale back enrichment would be diplomatically, at the Vienna talks, but after this latest incident, it is likely Iran’s parliament will order more increases in operations.
Iran really needs to look into its security, this happened last year when the breach caused a fire.
“but Iran reported severe damage to the site”
If Iran reported severe damage, then why are you linking to the ‘Times of Israel” instead of Fars or some other Iranian news outlet, or a twitter post from an Iranian official?
Exactly….! The news are vague as some reported damage to centrifuges and some reported power outage…! Damage to the centrifuges means the explosion was in-house like the last time…! Damage to the electric power grid serving the facility means the explosion is most likely outside in a substation on a transformer which could be miles away from the facility…! In either case the question is why there is no news on any emergency generator(s) coming online after the power outage…?!
Perhaps because most readers don’t read Farsi?
There’s nothing certain now.
. . .from PressTV–
Power at Natanz was cut across the facility Sunday, but officials said there was no casualty or damage, nor was any particular contamination or problem. “Gladly there was no human or environmental damage, but it could have certainly led to a catastrophe that is a crime against humanity, which is not uncommon in the thuggish nature of the Zionist regime,” Khatibzadeh said.. .here
. . .from Tehran Times–
He also called it “too early” to estimate the degree of damage to the Natanz site. “The amount of damage should be done by testing all the centrifuges and of course replacing them with advanced centrifuges. The exact amount of damage must be announced by the Atomic Energy Organization (of Iran) itself. It is too early now and they are examining each and every centrifuge.” .here