Iran has confirmed that its underground nuclear facility Natanz was damaged due to a fire and said that it has caused a significant impact on its new centrifuge assembly centre. Initially, the authorities had downplayed the incident and claimed that it had only affected and “industrial shed”. It has now been confirmed that it had damaged the entire centrifuge assembly centre which had been opened in 2018.
It is suspected that Iran is using the coronavirus crisis to bolster its nuclear program. Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Navy Chief said on Sunday that Tehran had built search underground missile cities and said that they existed in all provinces of Iran. Natanz is the centrepiece of Iran’s enrichment programme, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. Western intelligence agencies and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) believe it had a coordinated, clandestine nuclear arms programme that it halted in 2003. Tehran denies ever seeking nuclear weapons.
There has been a lot of pointing fingers in this issue, since the United States and Israel are suspected to be behind this as Iran had recently issued an arrest warrant against US President Donald Trump. The suspicion comes after a recent computer virus that was expected to be developed by the United States and Israel had attacked the server of Natanz.
While the US has refrained from commenting on this, Israel’s defence minister had said on Sunday that it was not ‘necessarily’ behind every incident in Iran.