Israel’s prime minister says it hit part of Iran’s nuclear programme last month, despite pleas from the US not to do so during the strikes it carried out in response to a missile attack.
“It’s not a secret. It was published,” Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament. “There is a specific component in their nuclear programme that was hit.”
He gave no details, but last week Axios reported that a “nuclear weapons research facility” making plastic explosives at the Parchin military complex was destroyed.
There was no immediate comment from Iran, but it has previously said the Israeli strikes caused limited damage to radar systems and that its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.
Iran has also insisted that it does not seek nuclear weapons, although evidence collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggests that until 2003 it conducted activities relevant to the development of a bomb. The agency says Iran has not yet answered outstanding questions related to its nuclear activity.
The IAEA also says Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons since the US abandoned a nuclear deal and reinstated crippling sanctions six years ago with Netanyahu’s support.
On 26 October, the Israeli military announced it had conducted “precise strikes on military targets in Iran” in response to the 1 October attack that saw almost 200 ballistic missiles launched towards Israel.
The military said the targets included missile manufacturing facilities, as well as surface-to-air missile arrays and aerial capabilities intended to restrict Israel’s freedom of operation inside Iran.
Iran’s military said the attacks caused “limited and minor damage” to several radar systems and that four Iranian military officers and one civilian were killed. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the effect of the attacks should not be “magnified or downplayed”.
Axios’s report cited unnamed US and Israeli officials as saying that intelligence services had detected recent activity at the Taleghan 2 facility that was “part of an effort inside the Iranian government to conduct research that could be used for the development of nuclear weapons but could also be presented as research for civilian purposes”.
One former Israeli official said the strike destroyed “sophisticated equipment used to design the plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it”, according to the report.
Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel’s parliament that “a nuclear Iran poses a massive threat to our existence, to the peace agreements we aim to achieve with more of our neighbours and to global peace”.
“We will be tested on our ability to thwart their nuclear ambitions,” he added.
He then mentioned the attack on the “specific component” of Iran’s nuclear programme before warning that the “programme itself, its capacity to act here, has not yet been thwarted”.
Before the Israeli strikes took place, US President Joe Biden had said publicly that he did not support attacks on Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities.
President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to take a harder line with Iran when he takes office in January, meanwhile said he had advised Netanyahu to “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later”.
Last week, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian told the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, that Iran was committed to resolving “doubts and ambiguities” surrounding its nuclear activities.
Mr Grossi visited Tehran ahead of a meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors this week, at which the UK, France and Germany are expected to pass a resolution critical of Iran’s co-operation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi warned that Tehran would “take countermeasures and new actions in our nuclear programme” in response to any such resolution.
He also strongly denied media reports that Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeed Iravani, had met Trump ally Elon Musk to defuse US-Iran tensions.
“We are still waiting for the new US administration to clarify its policies, and based on that, we will adjust our own policies. Right now, it is neither the time for such meetings nor is it appropriate,” he said.