there you go tmats. Sorry the original report "yelled in print"


https://www.powerlineblog.com/...nuclear-facility.php

With Donald Trump out of office and Joe Biden desperately trying to strike a deal with Iran, the mullahs are ramping up their nuclear program. Thus on Saturday, with great fanfare, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, unveiled the centrifuges designed to produce enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons.

Israel had other ideas. It responded by crashing the electrical grid at Iran’s Natanz facility, where the centrifuges are located.

Iran at first described the blackout as an accident. However, Israel disputed this claim. According to the Jerusalem Post, the government acknowledged that the damage was caused by a cyber attack carried out by Mossad. The Natanz facility has been targeted by the Israelis on several occasions in the past.

Here is the public statement by the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF):

The IDF’s actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ vision, who are observing us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps. By virtue of clever operational activities, the past year was one of the most secure years that the citizens of the State of Israel have known. We will continue to act, combining power and discretion, determination and responsibility – all of this to guarantee the security of the State of Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said this:

The struggle against Iran and its proxies and the Iranian armament efforts is a huge mission. The situation that exists today will not necessarily be the situation that will exist tomorrow.

Iran now agrees that the event at Natanz was sabotage by its enemies (“terrorists,” it calls them), not an accident.

How much damage did the electrical blackout at Natanz cause? It’s not clear. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization acknowledged that the attack damaged the site’s electrical grid and caused a “serious disruption.” Israeli officials said the attack was more serious than Iran was letting on, and local outlets reported the power outage caused severe damage.

The attack occurred while U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Israel, pledging (for whatever it’s worth) an “enduring and ironclad” American commitment to Israel.

We don’t know the Biden administration’s view of the cyber attack. It should be pleased because, if anything, successful attacks on Iran’s attempts to step up its nuclear program provide leverage to Team Biden as it tries to negotiate with the mullahs.

Iran’s unveiling of the centrifuges can be viewed, at least in part, as an attempt to increase its leverage. Damaging the facility in question can therefore be viewed as offsetting that leverage to some degree. In theory, the more difficulty Iran thinks it will confront in developing nukes, the more likely it is to agree not to develop them in exchange for concessions. (The value of such an agreement is a separate, but key, question.)

But Democratic administrations, and even an occasional Republican one, tend to view Israel as an obstacle to whatever they are trying to accomplish at the moment. Typically, they want Israel to stand quietly on the sidelines while America, posing as the adult, makes all manner of concessions.

The attack on the Natanz facility shows that, at least as long as Netanyahu is in charge, Israel will not be sidelined, regardless of how eloquently Biden’s officials pledge to take care of their ally. Rather, Israel will continue to thwart, as best it can, Iran’s nuclear designs.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sdy,

Netanyahu realizes that he doesn't have real allies in this administration and Israel is on it's own. Biden would feed Israel to the Mullahs and be done with Israel if he could. What Pelosi, Biden, Schumer (Jewish when it's beneficial) and the rest of the Democrats don't realize is Israelis are not like American Jews. They will fight and stand up for the Nation that is Israel.

I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

That was my first thought also. Do they normally go that route?

This could be a re-hashed story of the Stuxnet attack discovered in 2010.

The attack vector is identical to that timeframe. The nation-state perpetrator was never really identified.

Has an enterprising journalist revisited Stuxnet, made some conclusions and then rinsed and repeated the story.

It's a sensational story to spring ...

If the Trump administration was still in power, perhaps Israel would not have felt the need to not only claim responsibility, but deliver a pretty strong message while doing so. Since that is not the case, and since the U.S. Secretary of Defense just happened to be in Israel at the time, Israel may have decided to give him a message to convey to his boss, namely that other countries may meekly watch Iran boldly unveil their centrifuges but Israel will act to protect its own self-interests whenever necessary.

^^^Quite possibly a message of 'You're either with us, or your with the terrorists' from Israel.

quote:

Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
If the Trump administration was still in power, perhaps Israel would not have felt the need to not only claim responsibility, but deliver a pretty strong message while doing so. Since that is not the case, and since the U.S. Secretary of Defense just happened to be in Israel at the time, Israel may have decided to give him a message to convey to his boss, namely that other countries may meekly watch Iran boldly unveil their centrifuges but Israel will act to protect its own self-interests whenever necessary.

That is my take as well.

Makes you wonder how vulnerable we are to the same sort of attack.

Israelis have balls.
"Never again".

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

I'm sort of there with you on that. I mean, they could have just kept saying no comment.

quote:

Originally posted by Batty67:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

I'm sort of there with you on that. I mean, they could have just kept saying no comment.

I'm with several above, their comments are directed at the Bidet admin as much as anyone else.

Good for Israel, and for the rest of the world, whether the current occupiers believe it or not. I guess this story was big enough that you had to yell in print to us.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

Anybody who mattered certainly already knew. Israel publicly claiming responsibility denied Iran the opportunity to claim it had been an accident of little consequence.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

It's a message to the world they aren't playing around even if they are standing by themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by Ackks:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I don't see any advantage gained by Israel by claiming responsibility.

It's a message to the world they aren't playing around even if they are standing by themselves.

That would be my guess. The Israelis certainly don’t seem to be dumb and they have a track record of pulling stuff off and keeping quiet about it. I think it is safe to say that they had a well thought out motive for claiming this one.

This article says Israel has not claimed responsibility, but multiple Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that an Israeli cyberattack caused the blackout

https://apnews.com/article/wor...2ed0f97b5486d71280c2

cut and paste:


Iran blamed Israel on Monday for an attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges — sabotage that imperils ongoing talks over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal and brings a shadow war between the two countries into the light.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Israeli media widely reported that the country had orchestrated a devastating cyberattack that caused a blackout at the nuclear facility. Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency.

While the nature of the attack and the extent of the damage at Natanz remains unclear, a former Iranian official said the assault set off a fire while a spokesman mentioned a “possible minor explosion.”

In a statement, the White House said it was aware of the Natanz attack and that “the U.S. was not involved in any manner,” without elaborating.

A former chief of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said the attack had set off a fire at the site and called for improvements in security. In a tweet, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei said that the second assault at Natanz in a year signaled “the seriousness of the infiltration phenomenon.” Rezaei did not say where he got his information.


The facility seemed to be in such disarray that, following the attack, a prominent nuclear spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi walking above ground at the site fell 7 meters (23 feet) through an open ventilation shaft covered by aluminum debris, breaking both his legs and hurting his head.

“A possible minor explosion had scattered debris,” Kamalvandi said, without elaborating.

Natanz has been targeted by sabotage in the past. The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, once disrupted and destroyed Iranian centrifuges there during an earlier period of Western fears about Tehran’s program.

In July, Natanz suffered a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant that authorities later described as sabotage. Iran now is rebuilding that facility deep inside a nearby mountain. Iran also blamed Israel for that, as well as the November killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier.

While the reports offered no sourcing for their information, Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the major threat to his country as he struggles to hold onto power after multiple elections and while facing corruption charges. Stopping the nuclear deal has been a repeated theme of his comments.

God Bless the Jews. But I think they are on their own now. Which COULD be a good thing. I doubt they will get any help from our country in the war on terror.

Interesting website: https://www.iranwatch.org/

"Estimated minimum time it would take Iran's 6,104 centrifuges, starting with sufficient reactor-grade uranium, to enrich the uranium further to weapon grade for
One bomb: At least 2.2 months[10]
Five bombs: At least 11 months[11]
"

https://www.iranwatch.org/our-...ble-weapon-potential

That’s assuming Iran doesn’t have any Plutonium to mix into the Uranium, which they would if starting from reactor spent fuel.

Hell, they might have enough enriched Uranium for one bomb already with how long Obama let them spin centrifuges.