TEHRAN: Iran charged Monday that its arch-enemy Israel was behind an attack on its Natanz uranium enrichment plant and vowed it would take “revenge” and ramp up its nuclear activities.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said a “small explosion” had hit the plant’s electricity distribution centre Sunday in what the foreign ministry called an Israeli act of “terrorism”.
The latest of a string of incidents hitting Iran’s nuclear programme came days after talks resumed in Vienna to salvage the battered 2015 Iranian nuclear deal that former US president Donald Trump abandoned.
His successor Joe Biden wants to revive the accord between Iran and six world powers, which places limits on Tehran’s nuclear programme in return for relief from punishing economic sanctions.
Israel strongly opposes the nuclear deal and has vowed to stop Iran from building an atomic bomb — a goal Tehran has always denied pursuing.
Iran initially reported a power blackout had hit the Natanz site Sunday, a day after it announced it had started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges banned under the deal.
Israel did not claim responsibility for the incident, but unsourced media reports in the country attributed it to the Israeli security services carrying out a “cyber operation”.
The European Union said it “rejects any attempts” to undermine the Vienna talks and stressed the “need to clarify the facts” over the incident.
Meanwhile, the EU on Monday added eight Iranian security officials, including the chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and three notorious prisons to a sanctions blacklist over a 2019 protest crackdown in the Islamic republic.
Iran responded by declaring it would cease all talks with the bloc on human rights and all “cooperation resulting from these talks... especially in (the fields of) terrorism, drugs and refugees”.
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