Sabotage May Weaken Tehran’s Position in Indirect Talks with U.S.

“Since the first-generation centrifuges are very sensitive and precise devices, it is likely that the sudden power outage damaged 5,000 of them and made them unusable,” Bayat said in an interview with VOA Persian on Monday. “This does not mean that they cannot be repaired, but it will take months, and Iran’s enrichment program will be postponed.”

Iran’s increasing violations of JCPOA uranium enrichment limits in recent months have been aimed at pressuring the Biden administration to lift Trump’s sanctions and return to the deal, Bayat said. U.S. officials have said Iran appears to be several months away from having enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb.

“But the message of this attack [on Natanz] is that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot proceed on this route and will be unsuccessful,” Bayat said.

In a Sunday tweet, Israeli network Channel 13 defense correspondent Alon Ben-David said: “Without the ability to enrich at Natanz in the coming months, Iran is losing its means of pressure in negotiations. Through security and intelligence channels, American officials expressed satisfaction with the damage to the facility.”

Iranian officials have threatened to take revenge against Israel for the Natanz incident.

Israeli analyst Sima Shine of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) told VOA that Iran has several options for a retaliatory strike.

“They tried in the past and I am sure they will try again in the cyber field, if they have any capability, [to conduct] a dramatic one to penetrate into Israeli civilian infrastructure,”Shine said. “They tried in the water field and others, and they will try to do it in the future, if it will be possible for them and successful.”

In separate comments to VOA, INSS analyst Eldad Shavit said rising tension between Iran and Israel may push the Biden administration to try to reach a JCPOA deal with Iran before tension escalates further.

“There is reason to believe that the U.S. administration will be now even more under pressure to reach an agreement with the Iranians because it is their strategic objective to return to the JCPOA and because they don’t have an alternative policy vis-a-vis Iran,” Shavit said. 

In addition to Iran’s threatened retaliation, Zarif said Tehran is planning a “significant upward leap” in its violations of the JCPOA curbs on its nuclear activities.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu told VOA Persian that Iran is likely to maintain its strategy of continued nuclear escalation to try to pressure the U.S. into weakening sanctions.

“I think that whatever kind of shadow war is going on in the region will be irrelevant to the JCPOA talks, much like it was in the pre-JCPOA era in the early 2010s,” Taleblu said.

Michael Lipin is VOA News editor/correspondent. Linda Gradstein contributed from Jerusalem and VOA Persian’s Payam Yazdian and Katherine Ahn contributed from Washington.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service, and is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).