Centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, November 5, 2019. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)

Israel was responsible for two blasts at Iranian facilities — one related to uranium enrichment, the other for missile production — over the past week, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported Friday.

The Al-Jareeda daily cited an unnamed senior source as saying that an Israeli cyberattack caused a fire and explosion at the largely underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in the predawn hours of Thursday morning.

According to the source, this was expected to set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by approximately two months.

The newspaper also reported that last Friday Israeli F-35 stealth fighter jets bombed a site located in the area of Parchin, which is believed to house a missile production complex — an area of particular concern for the Jewish state, in light of the large number and increasing sophistication of missiles and rockets in the arsenals of Iranian proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Fighter jets from the IAF’s second F-35 squadron, the Lions of the South, fly over southern Israel (IDF spokesperson)

Neither of these claims were confirmed by Israeli officials, who have been mum on the reports.

The reported Israeli strikes followed an alleged Iranian attempt to hack into Israel’s water infrastructure in April, an effort that was thwarted by Israeli cyber defenses, but if successful could have introduced dangerous levels of chlorine into the Israeli water supply and otherwise seriously interrupted the flow of water throughout the country.

Ultimately, the alleged Iranian cyberattack caused minimal issues, according to Israeli officials.

View of the Eshkol Water Filtration Plant in Northern Israel (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

The alleged Israeli attacks also came amid an ongoing campaign of so-called maximum pressure by the United States in the form of crushing sanctions on Iran and Iranian officials.

View of the Eshkol Water Filtration Plant in Northern Israel (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

Early Thursday morning, a fire and then an explosion were reported at an above-ground building in the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, which US-based analysts said was likely a new centrifuge production plant. Natanz, located some 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Tehran, includes underground facilities buried under some 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete, which offers protection from airstrikes.

Photographs of the site showed significant damage to one above-ground building, which was covered in scorch marks and had its roof apparently destroyed.

The BBC’s Persian service said it received an email from a group identifying itself as the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claiming responsibility for the attack. The email was received prior to the announcement of the Natanz fire.

This photo released on July 2, 2020, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, shows a building after it was damaged by a fire, at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility some 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP)

The group, which claimed to be dissident members of Iran’s security forces, had never been heard of before by Iran experts and the claim could not be immediately authenticated by The Associated Press.

The site of the fire corresponds to a newly opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. He said he relied on satellite images and a state TV program on the facility to locate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.

A fire has burned a building above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, though officials say it did not affect its centrifuge operation or cause any release of radiation. (AP graphic)

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was under construction and later built.

Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment about the analysts’ comments.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sought to downplay the fire, calling it an “incident” that only affected an under-construction “industrial shed,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. However, both Kamalvandi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi rushed after the fire to Natanz, which has been targeted in sabotage campaigns in the past.

Last Friday, a large blast was felt in Tehran, apparently caused by an explosion at the Parchin military complex, which defense analysts believe hold an underground tunnel system and missile production facilities.

According to the al-Jareeda report on Friday, that explosion was caused by missiles dropped by a number of Israeli F-35 stealth fighter jets.

The newspaper reported that the aircraft took off from southern Israel and carried out the bombing run without the need to refuel.

This Friday, June 26, 2020, photo combo from the European Commission’s Sentinel-2 satellite shows the site of an explosion, before, left, and after, right, that rattled Iran’s capital. Analysts say the blast came from an area in Tehran’s eastern mountains that hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites. The explosion appears to have charred hundreds of meters of scrubland. (European Commission via AP)The Fars news agency, which is close to the country’s ultra-conservatives, initially reported that the blast was caused by “an industrial gas tank explosion” near a facility belonging to the defense ministry. It cited an “informed source” and said the site of the incident was not related to the military.

However, this was largely disregarded by defense analysts as satellite photographs of the Parchin military complex emerged showing large amounts of damage at the site.

Later, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Davood Abdi blamed the blast on a leaking gas that he did not identify and said no one was killed in the explosion.

Satellite photos of the area, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of meters (yards) of charred scrubland not seen in images of the area taken in the weeks ahead of the incident. The building near the char marks resembled the facility seen in the state TV footage.

The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran’s Khojir missile facility. The explosion appears to have struck a facility for the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, which makes solid-propellant rockets, said Fabian Hinz.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies identified Khojir as the “site of numerous tunnels, some suspected of use for arms assembly.” Large industrial buildings at the site visible from satellite photographs also suggest missile assembly being conducted there.

Iranian officials themselves also identified the site as being home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspects Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons. Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in “support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program” that largely halted in late 2003.

Western concerns over the Iranian atomic program led to sanctions and eventually to Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The US under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in May 2018, leading to a series of escalating attacks between Iran and the US, and to Tehran abandoning the deal’s production limits.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-israeli-cyberattack-caused-iran-nuclear-site-fire-f35s-hit-missile-base/

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When about 100 Russian servicemen and military equipment were reportedly flown into Venezuela in late March, US President Donald Trump’s response was to declare that ‘Russia has to get out’. Moscow refused, saying that the troops would stay ‘as long as needed’ and that they were only there to repair equipment, such as Venezuela’s Russian-made S-300 air-defence system. Russia has denied the recent reports that it had told the US that it was pulling defence personnel out of Venezuela.

Amid the continuing political, economic and humanitarian meltdown of Venezuela, an anti-American alliance consisting of Russia, Cuba and Iran is coalescing to counter US economic and diplomatic pressure on embattled President Nicolas Maduro. The anchor of the alliance is Cuba, which colonised Venezuela through its security services when Fidel Castro’s protege Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998.

Castro then began shipping tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day back to Cuba, while Venezuela became what is widely considered a ‘mafia state’. He also expanded his relationships with the narco-terrorist insurgencies plaguing the region, most famously FARC and the National Liberation Army in Colombia. Cuba’s security services helped stand up loyalist paramilitary organisations called colectivos to terrorise opponents of the Maduro regime. More recently, Cuba assisted in creating the Special Actions Force, or FAES, which strikes at opposition figures.

But Cuba is not alone. It cooperated with its longstanding ally, Iran, to help build security architecture to protect its colony. The expeditionary wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, worked alongside Cuban intelligence in Venezuela to consolidate the regime’s hold. Since 2005, Iran has extended €1 billion (A$1.61 billion) in loans to Cuba and is heavily involved in several projects there, including a shared intelligence station to block US radio broadcasts.

A proxy of the Quds Force, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, has also had a close relationship with the Venezuelan regime, which mostly revolves around proceeds from illicit drugs, money laundering and other organised crime to supplement its activities in the Middle East. In an exposé on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s operation to track and shut down Hezbollah’s global operations, Josh Myer writes that:

[B]eginning in 2007, DEA agents watched as a commercial jetliner from Venezuela’s state-run Conviasa airline flew from Caracas to Tehran via Damascus, Syria, every week with a cargo-hold full of drugs and cash. They nicknamed it ‘Aeroterror,’ they said, because the return flight often carried weapons and was packed with Hezbollah and Iranian operatives whom the Venezuelan government would provide with fake identities and travel documents on their arrival.

The Venezuelan embassy in Iraq was reportedly involved in a similar effort.

In 2010, an unclassified US Defense Department report to Congress on Iranian military power noted an increased Revolutionary Guard presence in Venezuela, and there are now credible reports of a Hezbollah terrorist training camp on Venezuela’s Margarita Island, as well as in Cuba. Maduro recently wrote a letter to Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah thanking him for his support after Nasrallah pledged military and security specialists to preserve his regime. Nasrallah said it was but a ‘small part’ that Hezbollah could offer Maduro and the memory of Chavez in return for the support they gave Hezbollah and Iran, particularly in providing funds for Hezbollah.

Just as worrying to the Americans as the pervasive Iranian presence in Venezuela is the increasing Russian interest in preserving Maduro’s rule. Moscow has almost single-handedly kept Maduro’s regime afloat financially, primarily through the Russian energy company Rosneft, which has used its leverage to take possession of Venezuela’s oil and oil infrastructure in exchange for massive loans. Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s chief executive and one of Russia’s most powerful men, had a close relationship with Chavez and reportedly meets with Maduro regularly.

As demonstrated in Syria, Moscow doesn’t like to let its allies fall, and the troops deployed to Venezuela aren’t the only indicator of increasing Russian military involvement there. In January, Reuters reported that perhaps hundreds of Russian ‘mercenaries’ from the Wagner group—a Russian military intelligence front with a presence in Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, the Central African Republic and possibly Libya—had been deployed to help protect Maduro. The report was published a day after Russia and Iran discussed coordinating their response to the crisis in Venezuela, and Russia is almost certainly leveraging Iranian and Cuban infrastructure to help keep Maduro in power.

In February, for example, Russia granted Cuba a military credit line for €38 million (A$61.25 million), and the Wagner contingent was said to have flown to Venezuela via Havana. There are also reports that Russia is looking to establish new bases in both Cuba and Venezuela, which it denies. In April, Iran opened a direct route to Caracas for Mahan Air, a company that’s been sanctioned in much of the Western world for being a transport system for Quds Force personnel and weapons. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, reportedly mooted sending Revolutionary Guard personnel to protect Maduro.

Trump initially seemed to favour military intervention in Venezuela. He has since done a complete about-face, following a mid-May phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin who he says assured him that Russia ‘is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela’. The failure of senior US officials to stage-manage Maduro’s overthrow using only sanctions and diplomacy has prompted Trump to lash out at their hawkish rhetoric and false assumptions.

While the current US strategy is simply to maintain sanctions and international pressure and wait out Maduro’s regime, the dynamics set in motion by the US and by Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido could take on a life of their own. Military intervention is extremely unlikely, but any uncalculated escalation or sudden collapse of the regime could inadvertently involve US forces battling Iranian- and Russian-backed Venezuelans in America’s own backyard.

Oved Lobel is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Image courtesy of the President of Russia.

Source: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/what-are-russia-iran-and-cuba-doing-in-venezuela/

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File photo: Missile fire over Damascus, Syria, January 21, 2019.SANA via Reuters

• Syria: If Israel can strike Damascus, we can strike Tel Aviv

• Satellite images show damage caused by Israeli strike on Damascus Airport

• After striking Syria, Netanyahu boasts about ‘renovating’ Damascus airport

Russia said on Wednesday that Israel should stop carrying out what it called arbitrary air strikes on Syria days after the Israeli air force targeted Iranian forces there.

Israel, which regards Iran as its biggest threat, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including Lebanon‘s Hezbollah.

“The practice of arbitrary strikes on the territory of a sovereign state, in this case, we are talking about Syria, should be ruled out,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, in answer to a question from Russian news agency TASS about recent Israeli air strikes on Syria.

>> Read more: Syria: If Israel can strike Damascus, we can strike Tel Aviv ■ In its battle against Iran, Israel is dependent on Russia’s plans for Syria ■ Israel and Iran are on a collision course in Syria – and the U.S. and Russia don’t care ■ A potential danger on the northern front

She said such strikes added to tensions in the region, something she said was not in the long-term interests of any country there, including Israel.

“We should never allow Syria, which has suffered years of armed conflict, to be turned into an arena where geopolitical scores are settled,” TASS cited her as saying.

Also on Wednesday, Syria’s UN envoy called on the Security Council to take measures against Israel’s assault on Syrian territories, as reported by the Syrian news agency Sana, wondering whether it would take a Syrian attack on Tel Aviv Airport to draw the council’s attention.

“Does drawing the attention of the war-makers in this Council require us to exercise our legitimate right to self-defense and respond to Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport by responding in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?” the Syrian envoy, Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’afari, asked.

On Sunday night, the Israeli military announced that it struck Syrian and Iranian targets, including sites of the Revolutionary Guards‘ Quds Force, in response to a surface-to-surface missile fired toward northern Israel a day earlier. Satellite images show that damage was incurred to several structures in Damascus International Airport.

Twenty-one people were killed in the strike, according to a war watchdog report on Tuesday, which also noted that at least 12 of them were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Earlier on Wednesday, Syria’s United Nations envoy called on the world body’s Security Council to take measures against Israel’s actions.

“Does drawing the attention of the war-makers in this Council require us to exercise our legitimate right to self-defense and respond to Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport by responding in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?” the Syrian envoy, Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’afari, asked.

Al-Ja’afri also accused UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov of being equivocal rather than definitive in calling out Israel’s “daily crimes” and breaches of UN resolutions.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/israel-s-arbitrary-airstrikes-on-syria-must-stop-russia-warns-1.6869172

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