IAEA: Iran’s Natanz nuclear-enrichment site attacked

The Israeli military said that a surface-to-air missile was fired at an Israeli fighter jet over Iranian airspace during one of the IAF’s operations with no damage caused to the aircraft. 

By JNS

Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz, southeast of Qom, was attacked on Saturday, the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency said after being informed by Tehran.

“No increase in off-site radiation levels [was] reported,” the nuclear watchdog tweeted. It added that an investigation into the matter will ensue.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported that it was the second time that the uranium-enrichment facility has been targeted since the start of the war on Feb. 28, according to The Wall Street Journal.

State officials were cited as saying that no leak of radioactive material has been detected at the complex, officially called the Shahid Ahmadi Roshan Nuclear Facilities.

Also on Saturday, Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), delivered a briefing via a recording about the war.

The U.S. military has struck more than 8,000 military targets in Iran, including 130 Iranian vessels, “constituting the largest elimination of a navy over a three-week period since World War II,” he said. Iran’s combat capability is “on a steady decline as our offensive strikes ramp up,” he added.

Regarding Iran’s disruption of maritime commerce through the Strait of Hormuz, spiking oil prices around the world, the admiral noted that CENTCOM remains “zeroed-in on dismantling Iran’s decades-old threat to the free flow of commerce throughout the Strait of Hormuz.

“For example, earlier this week we dropped multiple 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility located along Iran’s coastline. The Iranian regime [used] the hardened underground facility to discreetly store anti-ship cruise missiles, mobile missile launchers, and other equipment that presented a dangerous risk to international shipping. We not only took out the facility but also destroyed intelligence support sites and missile radar relays that were used to monitor ship movements,” he stressed.

As a result, Iran’s capacity to threaten freedom of navigation in the area has been degraded, he added.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces said that its Air Force completed, overnight Friday, a widespread air raid on dozens of Iranian regime targets, including a central complex of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used for producing ballistic missile components.

The IAF also targeted a storage site for components used in missile production, a complex belonging to the Iranian Defense Ministry responsible for producing missile fuel, and another production site for ballistic missile components, the IDF said.

“The attack on these sites severely damages the Iranian terror regime’s ability to continue producing essential components for ballistic missiles at these sites,” the military added.

In a separate tweet in Hebrew, the Israeli military said that a surface-to-air missile was fired at an Israeli fighter jet over Iranian airspace during one of the IAF’s operations.

The crew acted in accordance with procedures, no damage was caused to the aircraft, and the mission was completed as planned, the IDF said.

It added that “several attempts” have been made to down Israeli aircraft since the start of the war, all of which failed.