Top Iranian MP: US, UK complicit in Natanz sabotage

The chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Energy Committee believes Iran should take tough action in response to an act of sabotage at the country’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier this month, which Tehran has blamed on Israel.

“I think Iran should take tough action. A harsh response cannot be hasty,” Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, who is also a professor of nuclear physics at Shahid Beheshti University, told the Tehran Times in an interview published on Friday.

“From now on, saboteurs and the individuals who contributed to the attack on the Natanz nuclear facility must be tracked down,” Abbasi Davani said.

The former director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) also blamed the US and Britain over the incident, saying most of the intelligence-gathering in such cases is done by American and British intelligence services, while the Israeli regime is the one that carries out the sabotage operations.

The Natanz nuclear site was hit by an attack on April 11 which Iran called “nuclear terrorism” and a “war crime”. The attack targeted the electricity distribution network of the Natanz enrichment facility and caused a blackout.

Abbasi Davani, who served as the AEOI chief from February 2011 to August 2013, further asserted that Iran reserves the right to retaliate and deliver even more destructive blows to the enemy.

In recent days, Israel has been gripped by consecutive incidents, including a missile landing near its secretive nuclear facility in Dimona and a powerful explosion rocking its Tomer factory manufacturing advanced weapons.

The incidents have been broadly speculated to be the inevitable consequences of the Israeli regime’s provocative and destructive moves.

Iranian officials also believe that Israel, through the Natanz sabotage act, intended to kill the prospects of a US return to the Iran nuclear deal, which would include the lifting of the United States’ illegal sanctions on Tehran. The deal, also called the JCPOA, was ditched by former US President Donald Trump in 2018.

Israeli officials expected to object to US return to JCPOA in DC visit

According to Israeli officials, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed a delegation traveling to Washington, DC, to stress their objection to the US return to the JCPOA and to refuse to discuss its contents.

According to a report published by Axios news website, Netanyahu convened a meeting on Thursday with the Israeli delegation to discuss the policies that will be presented in Washington.

The decision at the end of the meeting was to stress that a return to the deal would put Israel in danger, and to otherwise decline to discuss the ongoing talks in Vienna, an Israeli official said.

During the meeting, Netanyahu also stressed that Israel is not a party to the JCPOA and is therefore not bound by it in any way, adding that Israel will maintain its freedom of operation against Iran in the region.

Meanwhile, Barbara Slavin, an American foreign policy expert, has said the Israeli prime minister acts for domestic motives when he conducts acts of sabotage such as the one at the Natanz nuclear site.

“Bibi Netanyahu also has domestic political problems and he thinks these kinds of actions make him look tough,” Slavin told the Tehran Times in an interview published on Friday.

She added that given the Israeli regime’s Stuxnet cyber-attack which targeted the Iranian nuclear energy program, many political figures in Iran believe that Israel and the US are accomplices in targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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