Iran’s Natanz facility for uranium enrichment was hit by Israeli airstrikes targeting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program early Friday, with Israeli defense officials assessing the damage was significant, Times of Israel reported.
According to the military, the Israeli Air Force strikes destroyed the underground section of the site, which housed “a multi-level enrichment hall housing centrifuges, electrical rooms, and other supporting infrastructure.”
The strikes also destroyed “critical infrastructure enabling the site’s continued operation and advancement of the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons project.”
Natanz is Iran’s largest uranium enrichment site, which the IDF says has been “working toward the development of nuclear weapons” for years, and “contains the infrastructure required for enrichment to a military-grade level.”
Footage circulating online earlier showed heavy strikes at the site, which, in addition to its underground site, also includes an above-ground pilot enrichment plant.
Iran’s atomic energy authorities said the attack “damaged several parts of the facility,” but that no increase in radiation levels or chemical contamination had been observed at Natanz.
In a statement citing local authorities, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran’s only nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr had not been targeted.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, in a statement to a meeting of the watchdog’s board of governors, said the other main enrichment center in Iran, Fordo, was not hit, and neither was another nuclear facility in Isfahan, citing Iranian authorities.
bd-pratidin/GR
