P. DAVID HORNIK:
“…The last couple of weeks have seen a string of apparent sabotage incidents in Iran. Questions about them abound. Possible answers are intriguing to say the least.
Probably the most significant attack came early Thursday morning at Natanz, when, as the New York Times reported:
A fire ripped through a building at Iran’s main nuclear-fuel production site…, causing extensive damage to what appeared to be a factory where the country has boasted of producing a new generation of centrifuges….
A Middle Eastern intelligence official…said the blast was caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility. The explosion, he said, destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility where new centrifuges…are balanced before they are put into operation….
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo…told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that Iran’s advanced centrifuges posed a threat.
“Iran is also accumulating dangerous knowledge,’’ he said…. “Late last year, Iran announced that its scientists were working on a new centrifuge — the IR-9 — that would allow Tehran to enrich uranium up to 50 times faster than the IR-1 centrifuges allowed” under the Obama-era deal.
Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai, for his part, told Radio Farda that “by using the new generation of centrifuges Iran could have acquired a nuclear bomb with staggering speed, within weeks or months.”
Instead, Iran appears to be facing a more dismal prospect. On Monday, Israel’s Channel 12 News said the “attack on the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, credited to Israel, had managed to set back Tehran’s uranium enrichment program by two years, citing Western intelligence estimates.”…”