Iran state TV airs footage of supposedly normal operations at Natanz site

Iranian state TV aired footage from what it said were regular operations at the Natanz nuclear facility on Saturday, following an April 11 explosion that is said to have caused considerable damage to the plant, including its various kinds of uranium-enriching centrifuges.

In response to the attack,  which it blames on Israel, Iran said it has begun enriching a small amount of uranium up to 60 percent purity at the site — its highest level ever, and a short step from weapons-grade.

The TV spot aired a short interview with an unnamed worker at the site who said that the staff was working around the clock to resume uranium enrichment.

“What you hear is the noise of the machines working normally. We are fixing all the centrifuges that have been affected, and with the help of our dedicated, excellent staff, we are working to fix all the damaged parts,” said the worker.

According to Iranian state media, Reza Karimi is the man involved in the Natanz attack and he succeeded in fleeing the country before it took place. The report shows a picture of the suspect and new footage from inside the nuclear facility. pic.twitter.com/wyV0SbeMFE

— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) April 17, 2021
It was unclear when the footage was filmed.

Israeli and American media have reported that a 150-kilogram bomb early Sunday morning took out Natanz’s main and backup power supplies and caused damage setting back the enrichment process by months.

A senior Iranian official said Tuesday that the blast destroyed or damaged thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Alireza Zakani, the hard-line head of the Iranian parliament’s research center, referred to “several thousand centrifuges damaged and destroyed” in a state TV interview. However, no other official has offered that figure and no images of the aftermath have been released.

Earlier on Saturday, Iran state television named 43-year-old Reza Karimi as a suspect in last week’s attack, saying he had since fled the country. The report showed a passport-style photograph of a man it identified as Karimi, saying he was born in the nearby city of Kashan, Iran.

The report also aired what appeared to be an Interpol “red notice” seeking his arrest. The arrest notice was not immediately accessible on Interpol’s public-facing database. Interpol, based in Lyon, France, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The TV report said “necessary actions” were underway to bring Karimi back to Iran through legal channels, without elaborating. The supposed Interpol “red notice” listed his travel history as including Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Ethiopia, Qatar, Turkey, Uganda, Romania and another country that was illegible.

On Saturday night, the same state media said that Karimi may not have acted alone.

The report did not elaborate on how Karimi or others would have gotten access to one of the most secure facilities in the Islamic Republic and Israeli analysts have questioned Iran’s claim to have found a suspect.

Raz Zimmt, an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies, urged taking the reports with a grain of salt.

“There is no doubt that some of the reason behind the report is to address internal criticism regarding security malfunctions that enabled the sabotage of Natanz,” Zimmt told Army Radio.

Last year, following another blast at the Natanz site that was also attributed to Israel, Iran named another Karimi as a suspect — Ershad Karimi, a contractor at the nuclear facility who owns a company, MEHR, that supplies precision measuring equipment.

According to Israel’s Channel 13, which also suggested skepticism over the new reports of a suspect, Ershad Karimi was never found.

The April 11 attack at Natanz was initially described only as a blackout in the electrical grid feeding above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls but Iranian officials later began calling it an attack.

On Monday, an Iranian official acknowledged that the blast took out the plant’s main electrical power system and its backup. “From a technical standpoint, the enemy’s plan was rather beautiful,” Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, the head of the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, told Iranian state television on Monday.

“They thought about this and used their experts and planned the explosion so both the central power and the emergency power cable would be damaged.”

The New York Times reported that the blast was caused by a bomb that was smuggled into the plant and then detonated remotely. The report cited an unnamed intelligence official, without specifying whether they were American or Israeli. This official also noted that the blast took out Natanz’s primary electrical system as well as its backup.

The report said that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said the explosion inside the bunker had created a hole so big that he fell into it when trying to examine the damage, injuring his head, back, leg and arm.

Channel 13’s military analyst, Alon Ben-David, said Saturday that claims by former prime minister Ehud Olmert that the bomb was likely placed there more than a decade ago, waiting for the right time to be detonated, were “credible.”