Israel’s Options Now In Slowing Iran’s Nuclear Project

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Israel’s Mossad has been throwing spanners into the works of Iran’s nuclear project ever since 2010, when its Stuxnet computer worm managed to infect Iranian computers, that in turn directed more than 1,000 of Iran’s centrifuges to spin out of control so that they destroyed themselves. That was followed, from 2010 to 2012, by the assassination, one by one, of four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. Then came the daring raid in 2018 by 20 Mossad agents, in the middle of the night, in the middle of Tehran, to find – behind 32 steel doors that the Mossad raiders had to blow up — Iran’s entire nuclear archive of 100,000 documents, and then to smuggle all of it back to Israel, where analysis provided conclusive evidence of Iran’s massive deceptions about its nuclear project.

Then in 2020, Mossad saboteurs managed to destroy most of a centrifuge plant at Natanz. The Iranians immediately set to work to build a replacement plant at Natanz – but this one was built 50 meters underground, which the Iranians assumed Israeli bombs would not be able to reach. But bombs from above were not used. That plant, too, was promptly blown up in 2021 – again, through sabotage, not a cyberattack of an airstrike. When it comes to Iran, the Mossad agents neither slumber nor sleep. Finally, at the end of 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s most important nuclear scientist, was assassinated while driving in the outskirts of Tehran.

Now Israel has to figure out how best to continue slowing down the Iranian project . A consideration of its options is here: “How can the Mossad slow down Iran’s nuke program?,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, August 13, 2021

Iran’s nuclear program is chugging ahead at the highest levels of enrichment ever and with the least international supervision in years.

The US has not figured out what to do about this other than vague statements that the Islamic Republic does not have forever to return to the JCPOA nuclear talks which have been mostly stalled since late May.

The Biden Administration has discovered that its readiness to capitulate to Iranian demands has not been enough to persuade Iran to return to the JCPOA; Rob Malley has done his craven utmost in Vienna, but Tehran is holding out for even more concessions.

If the Biden administration cannot figure out what it wants to do and Tehran keeps barreling forward, what options would be open to Israel to slow Iran down?

There are a range of wild covert operations that are possible, but why not an old fashion airstrike?

It is unlikely – at this stage – that Jerusalem would employ an airstrike as in 1981 against Iraq or 2007 against Syria.

Both of Israel’s previous airstrikes on nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007, were a complete surprise. Iran, however, is alert to the possibility of such an attack. Furthermore, the most important of Iran’s nuclear facilities have been built deep inside the mountain at Fordow. It’s unclear if Israel now possesses a bunker-buster bomb sufficient to reach and destroy those facilities. It’s one of the weapons that the Biden administration should be supplying to Israel In order to meet the legal requirement that Israel’s QME – Qualitative Military Edge – be maintained. But has it? There has been no announcement about such a transfer, which suggests that it has not yet taken place. And that might be reason enough for Israel to refrain from an attack by air on Iran’s nuclear facilities; it should wait until it takes possession of such essential ordnance.

Few specifics have come out on the record from CIA Director William Burns’srecent meetings this week with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Mossad Director David Barnea and other top officials.

But the tone seemed to be one of Washington trying to calm the waters.

This would mean that the Biden administration wants space for negotiations.

A major public airstrike, at this stage, could lead to major negative consequences with the US on top of retaliation from Iran and its proxies.

Were Israel to conduct an airstrike on an Iranian nuclear facility, the assumption seems to be that instead of being cowed, Iran would retaliate, either directly or through its proxies and allies: Houthis in Yemen striking Saudi oil facilities and wreaking havoc with the world energy market; the main Shi’a militia in Iraq, Kata’ib Hezbollah, hitting the American embassy, or an American airbase in Iraq; Hezbollah launching.a barrage of thousands of rockets into the Galilee. And therefore, Israel should be extremely reluctant to launch an airstrike at this point, doing so only if there is no other way to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. And, the article’s author argues, that is not now the case; there are still so many ways, short of an airstrike, to keep Iran from reaching its goal.

According to Iran, and with validations The Jerusalem Post has received, the two Natanz hits and the Karaj hits were all physical sabotage.

It is interesting that in all three cases there were some initial reports, later disproven, that the sabotage was caused by cyberattacks….

Stuxnet was the first publicly-known attack on Iran’s nuclear project by Israel. It was the first such massive cyberattack in history, and this led, unsurprisingly, to assumptions that the two later attacks at Natanz were also cyberattacks. But they weren’t. They were acts of old-fashioned sabotage, carried out by Mossad agents, who somehow managed to place explosive material into furniture placed at both plants, and then to explode them from a distance.

And if cyber was not used specifically against Iran in the nuclear arena of Natanz or Karaj, Iran has attributed to Israel a May 2020 electronic attack which shut down its critical Shahid Rajaee port. Also, Iran accused the Jewish state of a hack to its key Saviz intelligence sea vessel in April of this year, which caused an explosion and major damage to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence capabilities….

Besides cyberattacks or sabotage by creatively planting bombs, drones or otherwise, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was part of a long line of Iranian scientists who have been killed.

Almost an entire group of key Iranian nuclear science officials who ran its program in 2003 have since been killed.

From 2010-2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists (Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan) were assassinated, some by car bomb, some by motorcycle bomb and some gunned down – as it appears occurred with Fakhrizadeh….

No doubt the Israelis know just how few nuclear scientists of that caliber Iran possessed; it could not afford to lose them to assassination. And what’s more, as we know, other nuclear scientists were contacted by Israeli agents who made them offers they could not refuse, warning them that if they continued to work on the nuclear project they would be killed. And a significant number were, indeed, scared off, and changed careers in order to stay alive.

The attacks keep coming, and the targets are not limited to nuclear facilities. Not just the cyberattacks, such as Stuxnet or the onsite sabotage, as at Natanz and Karaj, or the assassinations of Iran’s five most important nuclear scientists, but also a host of attacks on non-nuclear facilities have badly rattled the Iranians. These are the “mysterious explosions” at petrochemical plants, electric power plants, even missile sites, all around Iran, that everyone knows Israel’s Mossad is responsible for; the cyberattacks on Iran’s bustling Shahid Rajaee port terminal that caused ships at sea and truck traffic on land to come to a complete halt last May, in a state of “utter chaos,” and the latest Mossad attack, this time on Iran’s national railway system, caused more such disarray, and cost to Iran’s economy.

The whole point of this catalogue of all the ways that the Mossad has been slowing down Iran’s nuclear project ever since the Stuxnet computer worm in 2010 (cyberattacks, on-site sabotage, assassinations) and at the same time also attacking so many other important sites vital to Iran’s economy (petrochemical plants, electricity plants, the main port at Shahid Rajaee, the national railway) is to suggest that Israel has been far more successful in delaying the nuclear project than it is letting on, as well as rattling Iran’s cage through other attacks, and that it should continue with the same heady mix of destruction and delay that has served it so well in the last eleven years. An airstrike now, the author argues is not necessary; there are so many other ways to harm Iran without antagonizing the Americans who, at this point, are still counting on a successful conclusion to the negotiations and a return of Iran to the JCPOA, and do not want any bombs-away by the IDF to get in the way. So for now, Mossad, just keep on keeping on. You are doing quite enough.

First published in Jihad Watch.