Tag: Nuclear

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Shelling Cuts Off Outdoors Energy to Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

Shelling Cuts Off Outside Power to Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

Recognition…Jim Huylebroek for the New York Times

Kyiv, Ukraine — Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was disconnected from the country’s power grid Monday after renewed shelling nearby, Ukrainian energy officials said, putting critical cooling systems once again at risk of relying solely on backup power.

Herman Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister, said a fire resulting from the shelling severed the Zaporizhia power plant’s last connection to a back-up line, which was its only source of external power.

Reactor No. 6, the plant’s only functioning reactor, was still producing electricity for the plant itself, and as of Monday evening, engineers had not turned on any diesel generators, according to an official from Energoatom, the Ukrainian company responsible for running the facility.

Mr Galushchenko said it was another precarious moment made even more ominous by the fact that fire crews were unable to reach the scene of the fire.

“Repairs on the lines are now impossible,” he said. “There’s fighting all around the station.”

An International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team that had been at the facility left behind two monitors hoping they would witness unfolding events and the tensions at the facility, which was being held by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainian engineers will, could alleviate . The greater hope had been that the shelling would stop.

The agency said that according to Ukrainian officials, the reserve line was “deliberately disconnected to put out a fire.”

“The line itself is not damaged and will be reconnected once the fire is out,” said the organization, which is part of the United Nations.

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear energy expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group in Cambridge, Mass., said the current situation – with the plant relying on one of its own reactors to power cooling systems – is ” not unique, but it is not common practice.”

He pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sets reactor safety standards for nuclear power plants, released a technical document in 2018 detailing the backup procedure.

“Some existing nuclear power plant technologies have this capability,” says the IAEA document, “while others do not.” Even plants that do have the capability could face “a time limit of generally a few hours” for back-up power be.

Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, said the external power outage — which has happened at least twice at the Zaporizhia plant in recent weeks — is “one of the most horrific events that could happen at a nuclear power plant.” .”

dr Meshkati, a member of the committee appointed by the United States National Academy of Sciences to learn lessons from the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, said there was no point in running the reactor.

An engineer in contact with people at the facility and in the satellite city of Enerhodar said Monday her colleagues had reported heavy shelling in the area over the past three days.

“Dwelling houses were damaged and many more people were injured and killed than was reported in the Ukrainian media,” said the engineer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals against her friends and family. “People continue to leave the city, including workers at the plant.”

Ukrainian officials tried to keep up pressure on the International Atomic Energy Agency to propose a robust assessment of both the conditions at the plant and the challenges faced by Ukrainian engineers charged with its safe operation.

Repeated shelling over the past month has damaged all of the facility’s connections to four external high-voltage power lines, forcing it to use a lower-voltage backup line to power the cooling equipment needed to avoid core meltdowns. It was this reserve line that was cut Monday.

When the main power lines and backup line were damaged by gunfire and fires on August 25, a power outage at the facility forced reliance on diesel generators to prevent a disaster.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a news conference on Friday that his main concern for the facility’s physical security is related to a reliable connection to external power supply.

William J. Broad contributed reporting from Brunswick, Maine.

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World News

Renewed Shelling Places Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant at Threat

Renewed Shelling Puts Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant at Risk

Even as hopes grew that a permanent presence of United Nations inspectors would help reduce the risk of a disaster at Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the war once again threatened the plant’s safe operation.

After Friday night’s shelling, the plant lost connection to its only remaining primary external power line, forcing it to use a lower-voltage backup line to power the cooling equipment needed to prevent core meltdowns, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement on Saturday.

Still, the agency’s director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, expressed cautious optimism that a plan to indefinitely station two nuclear experts at the facility would help reduce the risk of a disaster.

“We think it was important for the agency to be there permanently,” he said. “The difference between being there and not being there is like night and day.”

The decision to monitor the facility despite the obvious risks underscored what Mr. Grossi described as the “unprecedented” danger of the moment. He added that having independent nuclear experts at the plant will allow for real-time, unbiased reports on conditions.

“Now if there is a claim that something happened at the plant, you can contact us,” he said, rather than weighing the conflicting claims of Russia and Ukraine.

Mr Grossi, who has avoided blaming either the Russians or the Ukrainians for the shelling, said on Friday that it appeared the power plant’s power supply was being deliberately attacked.

“It is clear that those who have these military targets know very well that the way to cripple or do more damage is not to look inside the reactors, which are enormously robust and robust,” he said . Instead, the rig gets hit where it hurts — the power lines that are essential to its operation.

On Saturday, Mr Grossi said the presence of the agency’s inspectors, who were able to confirm the damage to the external power line, had already proved valuable.

“Our on-site team received direct, fast and reliable information on the latest significant developments affecting the power plant’s external power supply and the operational status of the reactors,” he said.

One of the plant’s six reactors is currently operational, the agency said, producing electricity for both cooling and other vital safety functions at the site, as well as for Ukrainian homes and factories.

The UN’s move to keep two inspectors at the facility comes as fighting rages on in southern and eastern Ukraine. The facility is perilously close to some of the most intense combat.

Late last month, the Ukrainian military launched a counter-offensive in the south, including the area directly opposite the nuclear power plant in the western Kherson region. On Saturday, British military intelligence said Ukraine’s advance on three fronts was likely “to have generated a degree of tactical surprise; Exploitation of poor logistics, administration and leadership in the Russian Armed Forces.”

But military analysts have dampened expectations for Ukraine’s push, saying between 15,000 and 25,000 Russian troops are stationed in fortified defenses west of the Dnieper.

Jack Watling, a research fellow and specialist in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain, wrote that unless Russian forces collapse from abysmal morale – which he says is “possible, but not something assumed in the planning can be” – then anything Success on the battlefield for the Ukrainians would take time.

On another front in the Ukraine war, German officials expressed cautious confidence their country could survive a winter without Russian energy after Russia indefinitely postponed gas supplies to the country.

Aware of President Vladimir V. Putin’s history of using energy supplies as a foreign policy tool, Berlin has been bracing for months for the possibility that Russia could cut gas supplies in retaliation for European resistance to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The German government has imposed tough energy-saving measures, and the ministry responsible for gas supplies found that Germany’s gas storage facilities are already nearly 85 percent full, a target set for early October.

And while Germany got 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia in February when Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian gas made up only about 10 percent of Germany’s on Tuesday — the last full day that gas flowed through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline gas mixes. thanks to months of gas procurement from other countries.

Gazprom, the Russian-owned energy giant, was scheduled to resume gas flow through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Saturday after three days of maintenance. But hours earlier, on what a European Union official called “false pretexts,” it said it found oil leaks around a turbine used to pressurize the pipeline, forcing it to restart cancel. There was no schedule for the reboot.

In Washington on Friday, the Biden administration asked Congress for $13.7 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, underscoring its commitment to supporting the war-torn country even as the conflict shows little sign of abating .

As part of Ukraine’s funding request, $7.2 billion would be used to give the country new weapons and military equipment, replenish US stockpiles and provide other defense-related support, government officials said. Another $4.5 billion would support the Ukrainian government and $2 billion would be used to offset the impact of the Russian invasion on energy supplies.

Marc Santora reported from Kyiv and Andrew E. Kramer from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Reporting was provided by Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin, Michael D. Shear from Washington and Dan Bilefsky from Montreal.

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Politics

A 2nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Technique

A 2nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Strategy

In the barren desert 1,200 miles west of Beijing, the Chinese government is digging a new field of what appears to be 110 silos for launching nuclear missiles. It is the second such field discovered in the past few weeks by analysts studying commercial satellite imagery.

It could mean a huge expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal – the need for an economic and technological superpower to show that, after decades of reluctance, it is ready to deploy an arsenal the size of Washington or Moscow.

Or it can simply be a creative, albeit costly, negotiating trick.

The new silos are apparently built to be discovered. The latest silo field, which began in March, is located in the eastern part of Xinjiang Province, not far from one of the notorious Chinese “re-education camps” in the city of Hami. It was identified late last week by nuclear experts from the Federation of American Scientists from images of a fleet of Planet Labs satellites and shared with the New York Times.

For decades, since its first successful nuclear test in the 1960s, China has maintained a “minimal deterrent” that most outside experts estimate at around 300 nuclear weapons. (The Chinese won’t say so, and the US government’s assessments will be classified.) If that’s true, that’s less than a fifth of the number deployed by the United States and Russia, and in the nuclear world, China has always considered itself an occupier of moral height and avoids expensive and dangerous arms races.

But that seems to be changing under President Xi Jinping. While China is cracking down on dissent at home, claiming new control over Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan and using cyber weapons much more aggressively, it is breaking new ground with nuclear weapons.

“The silo construction at Yumen and Hami represents the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal of all time,” write Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen in a study on the new silo field. They found that China has operated about 20 silos for large liquid-fuel missiles called DF-5s for decades. But the newly discovered field, combined with one hundreds of miles away in Yumen, northeast China, discovered by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, will bring about 230 new silos to the country. The Washington Post previously reported the existence of this first field with around 120 silos.

The puzzle is why China’s strategy has changed.

There are several theories. The simplest is that China now sees itself as a comprehensive economic, technological and military superpower – and wants an arsenal to match that status. Another possibility is that China is concerned about the increasingly effective American missile defense and India’s nuclear build-up, which is advancing rapidly. Then there is Russia’s announcement of new hypersonic and autonomous weapons and the possibility that Beijing may want a more effective deterrent.

A third is that China is concerned that its few ground-based missiles are vulnerable to attack – and by building more than 200 silos spread across two locations, they can play a shell game, move 20 or more missiles, and unit make states guess where they are. This technique is as old as the nuclear arms race.

“Just because you build the silos doesn’t mean you have to fill them all with missiles,” says Vipin Narang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in nuclear strategy. “You can move them.”

Updated

July 26, 2021, 5:21 p.m. ET

And of course you can swap them. China may believe that sooner or later it will be drawn into arms control negotiations with the United States and Russia – something President Donald J. Trump tried to force in his final year in office when he said he would not renew the New START treaty on Russia unless China, which never participated in nuclear arms control, was included. The Chinese government rejected the idea, saying if Americans were so concerned they should cut their arsenal by four-fifths to Chinese levels.

The result was a standstill. At the very end of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his arms control officer Marshall Billingslea wrote: “We have asked Beijing for transparency and, together with the United States and Russia, to work out a new arms control agreement covering all categories of nuclear weapons.”

“It is time for China to stop posing and acting responsibly,” they wrote.

But the Biden government had come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to phase out New START with Russia just because China refused to join. After his term in office, President Biden acted quickly to renew the treaty with Russia, but his administration has said that at some point it would like China to make some kind of deal.

These conversations have yet to begin. Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is this week for the first visit by a senior American diplomat to China since Mr Biden took office, although it is not clear that nuclear weapons are on the agenda. In addition to leading nuclear talks with Russia.

At the White House, the National Security Council declined to comment on evidence of China’s growing arsenal.

It is likely that American spy satellites picked up the new build months ago. But it all came public after Mr. Korda, a research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, used civilian satellite imagery to survey the arid hinterland of Xinjiang Province, a rugged area of ​​mountains and deserts in northwest China . He looked for visual clues about the silo construction that matched what the researchers had already discovered.

In February, the Federation of American Scientists reported the expansion of missile silos at a military training area near Jilantai, a city in Inner Mongolia. The group found 14 new silos under construction. Then came the discovery in Yumen.

While searching the wilderness of Xinjiang Province, Mr. Korda specifically looked for inflatable domes – similar to those that house some tennis courts. Chinese engineers erect them over the construction sites of underground missile silos to hide the work underneath. Suddenly, about 250 miles northwest of the recently discovered base, he found a series of inflatable domes, almost identical to those in Yumen, on another sprawling military compound.

The new construction site is in a remote area that the Chinese authorities have cut off from most of the visitors. It is about 60 miles southwest of the city of Hami, known as the site of a re-education camp where the Chinese government detains Uyghurs and members of other minorities. And it’s about 260 miles east of a tidy complex of buildings with large roofs that can open to the sky. Recently, analysts identified the site as one of five military bases where the Chinese armed forces have built lasers that can fire concentrated beams of light at reconnaissance satellites, which are mainly sent into the air by the United States. The lasers blind or deactivate fragile optical sensors.

Working with his colleague, Mr. Kristensen, a weapons expert who leads the group’s nuclear information project, Mr. Korda used satellite photos to explore the site.

The new silos are a little less than two miles apart, according to their report. In total, the sprawling construction site covers around 300 square miles – similar in size to the Yumen base, also in the desert.

Mr. Narang said the two new silo fields gave the Chinese government “many options”.

“It’s not crazy,” he said. “You are making the United States target many silos that may be empty. They can slowly fill these silos when they need to build their strength. And they get influence in arms control. “

“I’m surprised they didn’t do that a decade ago,” he said.

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Politics

Threat of Nuclear Struggle Over Taiwan in 1958 Stated to Be Higher Than Publicly Identified

Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known

WASHINGTON — When Communist Chinese forces began shelling islands controlled by Taiwan in 1958, the United States rushed to back up its ally with military force — including drawing up plans to carry out nuclear strikes on mainland China, according to an apparently still-classified document that sheds new light on how dangerous that crisis was.

American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die, dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study of the confrontation show. The government censored those pages when it declassified the study for public release.

The document was disclosed by Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked a classified history of the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers, 50 years ago. Mr. Ellsberg said he had copied the top secret study about the Taiwan Strait crisis at the same time but did not disclose it then. He is now highlighting it amid new tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan.

While it has been known in broader strokes that United States officials considered using atomic weapons against mainland China if the crisis escalated, the pages reveal in new detail how aggressive military leaders were in pushing for authority to do so if Communist forces, which had started shelling the so-called offshore islands, intensified their attacks.

The crisis in 1958 instead ebbed when Mao Zedong’s Communist forces broke off the attacks on the islands, leaving them in the control of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist Republic of China forces based on Taiwan. More than six decades later, strategic ambiguity about Taiwan’s status — and about American willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend it — persists.

The previously censored information is significant both historically and now, said Odd Arne Westad, a Yale University historian who specializes in the Cold War and China and who reviewed the pages for The New York Times.

“This confirms, to me at least, that we came closer to the United States using nuclear weapons” during the 1958 crisis “than what I thought before,” he said. “In terms of how the decision-making actually took place, this is a much more illustrative level than what we have seen.”

Drawing parallels to today’s tensions — when China’s own conventional military might has grown far beyond its 1958 ability, and when it has its own nuclear weapons — Mr. Westad said the documents provided fodder to warn of the dangers of an escalating confrontation over Taiwan.

Even in 1958, officials doubted the United States could successfully defend Taiwan using only conventional weapons, the documents show. If China invaded today, Mr. Westad said, “it would put tremendous pressure on U.S. policymakers, in the case of such a confrontation, to think about how they might deploy nuclear weapons.”

“That should be sobering for everyone involved,” he added.

In exposing a historical antecedent for the present tensions, Mr. Ellsberg said that was exactly the takeaway he wanted the public to debate. He argued that inside the Pentagon, contingency planning was likely underway for the possibility of an armed conflict over Taiwan — including what to do if any defense using conventional weapons appeared to be falling short.

“As the possibility of another nuclear crisis over Taiwan is being bandied about this very year, it seems very timely to me to encourage the public, Congress and the executive branch to pay attention to what I make available to them,” he said about what he characterized as “shallow” and “reckless” high-level discussions during the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis.

He added, “I do not believe the participants were more stupid or thoughtless than those in between or in the current cabinet.”

Among other details, the pages that the government censored in the official release of the study describe the attitude of Gen. Laurence S. Kutner, the top Air Force commander for the Pacific. He wanted authorization for a first-use nuclear attack on mainland China at the start of any armed conflict. To that end, he praised a plan that would start by dropping atomic bombs on Chinese airfields but not other targets, arguing that its relative restraint would make it harder for skeptics of nuclear warfare in the American government to block the plan.

“There would be merit in a proposal from the military to limit the war geographically” to the air bases, “if that proposal would forestall some misguided humanitarian’s intention to limit a war to obsolete iron bombs and hot lead,” General Kutner said at one meeting.

At the same time, officials considered it very likely that the Soviet Union would respond to an atomic attack on China with retaliatory nuclear strikes. (In retrospect, it is not clear whether this premise was accurate. Historians say American leaders, who saw Communism as a monolithic global conspiracy, did not appreciate or understand an emerging Sino-Soviet split.)

But American military officials preferred that risk to the possibility of losing the islands. The study paraphrased Gen. Nathan F. Twining, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that if atomic bombings of air bases did not force China to break off the conflict, there would be “no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai.”

He suggested that such strikes would “almost certainly involve nuclear retaliation against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa,” the Japanese island where American military forces were based, “but he stressed that if national policy is to defend the offshore islands then the consequences had to be accepted.”

The study also paraphrased the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, as observing to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that “nobody would mind very much the loss of the offshore islands but that loss would mean further Communist aggression. Nothing seems worth a world war until you looked at the effect of not standing up to each challenge posed.”

Ultimately, President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed back against the generals and decided to rely on conventional weapons at first. But nobody wanted to enter another protracted conventional conflict like the Korean War, so there was “unanimous belief that this would have to be quickly followed by nuclear strikes unless the Chinese Communists called off this operation.”

Mr. Ellsberg said he copied the full version of the study when he copied the Pentagon Papers. But he did not share the Taiwan study with reporters who wrote about the Vietnam War study in 1971, like Neil Sheehan of The Times.

Mr. Ellsberg quietly posted the full study online in 2017, when he published a book, “Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” One of its footnotes mentions in passing that passages and pages omitted from the study are available on his website.

But he did not quote the study’s material in his book, he said, because lawyers for his publisher worried about potential legal liability. He also did little else to draw attention to the fact that its redacted pages are visible in the version he posted. As a result, few noticed it.

One of the few who did was William Burr, a senior analyst at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, who mentioned it in a footnote in a March blog post about threats to use nuclear weapons in the Cold War.

Mr. Burr said he had tried about two decades ago to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a new declassification review of the study — which was written by Morton H. Halperin for the RAND Corporation — but the Pentagon was unable to locate an unabridged copy in its files. (RAND, a nongovernmental think tank, is not itself subject to information act requests.)

Mr. Ellsberg said tensions over Taiwan did not seem as urgent in 2017. But the uptick in saber-rattling — he pointed to a recent cover of The Economist magazine that labeled Taiwan “the most dangerous place on Earth” and a recent opinion column by The Times’s Thomas L. Friedman titled, “Is There a War Coming Between China and the U.S.?” — prompted him to conclude it was important to get the information into greater public view.

Michael Szonyi, a Harvard University historian and author of a book about one of the offshore islands at the heart of the crisis, “Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line,” called the material’s availability “hugely interesting.”

Any new confrontation over Taiwan could escalate and officials today would be “asking themselves the same questions that these folks were asking in 1958,” he said, linking the risks created by “dramatic” miscalculations and misunderstandings during serious planning for the use of nuclear weapons in 1958 and today’s tensions.

Mr. Ellsberg said he also had another reason for highlighting his exposure of that material. Now 90, he said he wanted to take on the risk of becoming a defendant in a test case challenging the Justice Department’s growing practice of using the Espionage Act to prosecute officials who leak information.

Enacted during World War I, the Espionage Act makes it a crime to retain or disclose, without authorization, defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary. Its wording covers everyone — not only spies — and it does not allow defendants to urge juries to acquit on the basis that disclosures were in the public interest.

Using the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers was once rare. In 1973, Mr. Ellsberg himself was charged under it, before a judge threw out the charges because of government misconduct. The first successful such conviction was in 1985. But it has now become routine for the Justice Department to bring such charges.

Most of the time, defendants strike plea deals to avoid long sentences, so there is no appeal. The Supreme Court has not confronted questions about whether the law’s wording or application trammels First Amendment rights.

Saying the Justice Department should charge him for his open admission that he disclosed the classified study about the Taiwan crisis without authorization, Mr. Ellsberg said he would handle his defense in a way that would tee the First Amendment issues up for the Supreme Court.

“I will, if indicted, be asserting my belief that what I am doing — like what I’ve done in the past — is not criminal,” he said, arguing that using the Espionage Act “to criminalize classified truth-telling in the public interest” is unconstitutional.

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U.S. and Iran Need to Restore the Nuclear Deal. They Disagree Deeply on What That Means.

U.S. and Iran Want to Restore the Nuclear Deal. They Disagree Deeply on What That Means.

Präsident Biden und die iranischen Staats- und Regierungschefs teilen ein gemeinsames Ziel: Beide wollen wieder in das Atomabkommen einsteigen, das Präsident Donald J. Trump vor drei Jahren abgeschafft hat, und damit das Abkommen wiederherstellen, dass der Iran seine Produktion von Kernbrennstoffen im Gegenzug stark einschränken würde für die Aufhebung von Sanktionen, die seine Wirtschaft erstickt haben.

Aber nach fünf Wochen Schattenboxen in Wiener Hotelzimmern – wo die beiden Seiten Notizen über europäische Vermittler weitergeben – ist klar geworden, dass der alte, streng definierte Deal zumindest auf lange Sicht für keinen von beiden mehr funktioniert.

Die Iraner fordern, dass sie die fortschrittliche Ausrüstung zur Herstellung von Kernbrennstoffen, die sie installiert haben, nachdem Herr Trump den Pakt aufgegeben hat, und die Integration in das Weltfinanzsystem über das hinaus behalten dürfen, was sie im Rahmen des Abkommens von 2015 erreicht haben.

Die Regierung von Biden sagt ihrerseits, dass die Wiederherstellung des alten Deals nur ein Sprungbrett ist. Es muss sofort eine Einigung über die Begrenzung der Raketen und die Unterstützung des Terrorismus folgen – und es dem Iran unmöglich machen, jahrzehntelang genug Treibstoff für eine Bombe zu produzieren. Die Iraner sagen keinen Weg.

Jetzt, da sich die Verhandlungsführer wieder in Wien engagieren, wo am Freitag eine neue Gesprächsrunde begann, befindet sich die Bidener Regierung an einem entscheidenden Entscheidungspunkt. Die Wiederherstellung des Abkommens von 2015 mit all seinen Mängeln scheint machbar, wie Interviews mit europäischen, iranischen und amerikanischen Beamten nahe legen. Aber das, was Außenminister Antony J. Blinken als “längeres und stärkeres” Abkommen bezeichnet hat – eines, das den Iran davon abhält, über Generationen hinweg Nuklearmaterial anzuhäufen, seine Raketentests zu stoppen und die Unterstützung terroristischer Gruppen zu beenden -, sieht so weit weg wie nie zuvor.

Dies ist möglicherweise eine große politische Verwundbarkeit für Herrn Biden, der weiß, dass er nicht einfach wiederholen kann, was die Obama-Regierung vor sechs Jahren nach Marathonsitzungen in Wien und anderswo ausgehandelt hat, und gleichzeitig vage Versprechungen macht, dass etwas viel Größeres und Besseres folgen könnte.

Der Iran und die Vereinigten Staaten “verhandeln wirklich unterschiedliche Geschäfte”, sagte Vali R. Nasr, ein ehemaliger amerikanischer Beamter, der jetzt an der Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies ist. “Deshalb sind die Gespräche so langsam.”

Die Amerikaner sehen in der Wiederherstellung des alten Deals einen ersten Schritt zu etwas viel Größerem. Und sie werden durch den Wunsch des Iran ermutigt, sich zu entspannen eine Reihe von finanziellen Beschränkungen, die über dieses Geschäft hinausgehen – hauptsächlich die Durchführung von Transaktionen mit westlichen Banken -, weil dadurch das geschaffen würde, was ein hochrangiger Verwaltungsbeamter als “reifen Umstand für eine Verhandlung über eine Folgevereinbarung” bezeichnete.

Die Iraner weigern sich, überhaupt über ein größeres Abkommen zu diskutieren. Und amerikanische Beamte sagen, es sei noch nicht klar, dass der Iran das alte Abkommen, das von mächtigen Hardlinern zu Hause verspottet wird, wirklich wiederherstellen will.

Da die iranischen Präsidentschaftswahlen sechs Wochen entfernt sind, dreht sich das relativ gemäßigte, lahme Team von Präsident Hassan Rouhani und Außenminister Mohammad Javad Zarif darum, dass eine Einigung gleich um die Ecke steht. “Fast alle wichtigen Sanktionen wurden aufgehoben”, sagte Rouhani am Samstag gegenüber den Iranern und bezog sich offenbar auf die amerikanischen Umrisse dessen, was möglich ist, wenn Teheran die scharfen Grenzen der Atomproduktion wiederherstellt. “Für einige Details sind Verhandlungen im Gange.”

Nicht so schnell, hat Herr Blinken geantwortet. Er und europäische Diplomaten unterstreichen, dass der Iran noch nicht ebenso detailliert beschrieben hat, welche nuklearen Grenzen wiederhergestellt würden.

Aber selbst wenn dies der Fall ist, ist es eine Frage, die amerikanische Beamte nur schwer beantworten können, wie Herr Biden eine neue iranische Regierung mit ziemlicher Sicherheit davon überzeugt, sich zu weiteren Gesprächen zur Verlängerung und Stärkung des Abkommens zu verpflichten. Die Berater von Herrn Biden sagen jedoch, dass ihre Strategie auf dem Gedanken beruht, dass die Wiederherstellung des alten Abkommens zu einer größeren internationalen Einheit führen soll, insbesondere mit Europäern, die energisch gegen die Entscheidung von Herrn Trump protestierten, ein funktionierendes Abkommen zu beenden. Und selbst der alte Deal, sagte ein hochrangiger Beamter, “hat das iranische Atomprogramm ernsthaft verschleiert.”

Außerhalb der Gespräche schweben die Israelis, die eine Kampagne der Sabotage und Ermordung fortsetzen, um das iranische Programm zu lähmen – und vielleicht die Verhandlungen selbst. So war es bemerkenswert, dass der Direktor des Mossad, der diese Operationen geleitet hat, kürzlich zu einem Treffen mit dem Präsidenten ins Weiße Haus geführt wurde. Nach einer Explosion im Kernkraftwerk Natanz im letzten Monat sagte Herr Biden den Helfern, dass der Zeitpunkt – gerade als die Vereinigten Staaten Fortschritte bei der Wiederherstellung des Abkommens machten – verdächtig sei.

Die Spaltung mit Israel bleibt bestehen. Bei den Treffen in Washington letzte Woche – zu denen auch Herr Blinken gehörte; der CIA-Direktor William J. Burns; und der nationale Sicherheitsberater Jake Sullivan – israelische Beamte argumentierten, dass die Vereinigten Staaten naiv seien, zu dem alten Abkommen zurückzukehren, von dem sie glauben, dass es eine entstehende Fähigkeit zum Ausbruch von Atomwaffen bewahrt.

Die Top-Berater von Herrn Biden argumentierten, dass drei Jahre „maximaler Druck“ auf den Iran, der von Herrn Trump und seinem Außenminister Mike Pompeo ausgeübt wurde, es nicht geschafft hätten, seine Regierung zu brechen oder seine Unterstützung des Terrorismus einzuschränken. Tatsächlich hatte es zu einem nuklearen Ausbruch geführt.

In Wien hat der Verhandlungsführer Robert Malley, dessen Beziehung zu Herrn Blinken auf die High School zurückgeht, die sie gemeinsam in Paris besucht haben, nach allen Angaben ein bedeutendes Angebot zur Aufhebung von Sanktionen unterbreitet, die mit dem ursprünglichen Abkommen „unvereinbar“ sind.

Am Mittwoch sagte Herr Blinken, dass die Vereinigten Staaten “unsere Ernsthaftigkeit des Zwecks bewiesen haben”, als sie zu dem Deal zurückkehrten.

“Was wir noch nicht wissen, ist, ob der Iran bereit ist, die gleiche Entscheidung zu treffen und voranzukommen”, sagte er der BBC.

Der Iran will, dass mehr Sanktionen aufgehoben werden, als die US-amerikanischen Richter im Einklang mit dem Abkommen stehen, und besteht darauf, dass mehr von seiner nuklearen Infrastruktur – insbesondere fortschrittlichen Zentrifugen – erhalten bleibt, als dieses Abkommen zulässt. Stattdessen argumentiert der Iran, dass die Internationale Atomenergiebehörde die neuen Zentrifugen einfach inspizieren sollte, eine Position, die für Washington nicht akzeptabel ist.

Während die Gespräche fortgesetzt werden, hält der Iran den Druck aufrecht, indem er seinen Vorrat an hochangereichertem Uran und die dafür erforderlichen Geräte aufbaut, was alles gegen das Abkommen verstößt.

Sowohl der Iran als auch die Vereinigten Staaten arbeiten unter heiklen politischen Zwängen. Auch wenn der oberste iranische Führer, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, die Wiener Gespräche unterstützt hat, werden Herr Rouhani und Herr Zarif von mächtigen Konservativen verspottet, die Washington nicht vertrauen und die Präsidentschaft erobern wollen.

Herr Biden seinerseits muss sich mit einem Kongress auseinandersetzen, der einem Deal äußerst skeptisch gegenübersteht und den Anliegen Israels weitgehend Sympathie entgegenbringt.

Aber mit dem Ende der iranischen Wahlen drängt die Zeit, und die Biden-Regierung hat beträchtliche Teile davon verloren, als sich ihre Verhandlungsposition weiterentwickelt hat, sagen Beamte. Die Amerikaner forderten zunächst die Rückkehr des Iran zur Einhaltung der Vorschriften und beschlossen dann, einige der Sanktionen der Trump-Regierung beizubehalten, um eine breitere Verhandlung zu erzwingen.

In zwei Diskussionen im Februar forderten die Europäer die amerikanischen Beamten auf, ernsthaft mit den Verhandlungen zu beginnen und einige Sanktionen als Geste des guten Glaubens gegenüber dem Iran aufzuheben. Diese Vorschläge wurden ignoriert. Aber als Ayatollah Khamenei sagte, dass das Land Uran bis zu einer Reinheit von 60 Prozent anreichern könne – im Gegensatz zu der Grenze von 3,67 Prozent im Atomabkommen -, nahm Washington die Angelegenheit ernst, sagten Beamte, aus Angst, dass dies die sogenannte weiter verringern würde Ausbruchzeit für den Iran, um genug Material für eine Bombe zu bekommen.

Erst Ende März einigten sich beide Seiten darauf, das gesamte Abkommen auf einmal auszuhandeln, und die Wiener Gespräche begannen Anfang April. Dann brauchten die Amerikaner mehr Zeit, um zuzugeben, dass die Rückkehr zum Abkommen von 2015, wie es geschrieben wurde, der beste und vielleicht einzige Weg war, um genug Vertrauen mit dem Iran aufzubauen, dass seine Führer sogar umfassendere Folgegespräche in Betracht ziehen könnten.

Es wurden drei Arbeitsgruppen eingerichtet: eine, um zu erörtern, welche Sanktionen Washington aufheben muss, eine, um zu erörtern, wie der Iran an die Anreicherungsgrenzen zurückkehrt, und eine, um zu erörtern, wie die gegenseitige Rückkehr geordnet werden soll. Der Iran hat sich noch nicht ernsthaft mit seinen Plänen befasst und besteht immer noch darauf, dass Washington zuerst vorgeht, aber ein weiterer Knackpunkt bleibt: Welche Sanktionen werden aufgehoben?

Herr Trump stellte mehr als 1.500 Sanktionen wieder her oder verhängte sie, um eine Erneuerung des Paktes zu verhindern. Die Sanktionen wurden in drei Körbe aufgeteilt – grün, gelb und rot, je nachdem, wie deutlich sie mit dem Deal unvereinbar sind. Grün wird aufgehoben; gelb muss ausgehandelt werden; und rot wird bleiben, einschließlich zum Beispiel Sanktionen gegen Einzelpersonen wegen Menschenrechtsverletzungen.

Die Entscheidung, welche Sanktionen aufzuheben sind, ist für beide Länder politisch heikel. In der gelben Kategorie besteht der Iran beispielsweise darauf, dass eine Sanktion seiner Zentralbank in der Trump-Ära unter der Bezeichnung Terrorismus aufgehoben werden muss, weil sie den Handel schädigt. Aber es wäre für Washington noch komplizierter, die Terrorismusbezeichnung für das mächtige Korps der Islamischen Revolutionsgarden aufzuheben, sagten die Beamten.

Für die Iraner wäre es selbst für den obersten Führer ein schwerer Verkauf, einem Deal zuzustimmen, der die Bestimmung der Garde nicht auflöst.

“Für Biden ist es schwer zu rechtfertigen, die Sanktionen gegen Institutionen aufzuheben, die immer noch die Interessen der USA in der Region bedrohen, und für Rouhani ist es schwierig, nach Hause zu gehen und sich damit zu rühmen, alle Sanktionen außer denen seiner Rivalen aufzuheben”, sagte Ali Vaez, der iranische Projektdirektor bei der Internationale Krisengruppe.

“Es ist ein fragiler Prozess”, sagte Vaez und bemerkte die Raketenangriffe des Iran im Irak. “Wenn ein einzelner Amerikaner getötet wird, wird der gesamte Prozess entgleist.”

Aber wie Herr Biden den Iran dazu bringt, ein besseres oder neues Abkommen auszuhandeln, ist die Frage.

Amerikanische Beamte haben keine wirkliche Antwort auf dieses Dilemma, als sie versuchen, das alte Abkommen wiederzubeleben, aber sie behaupten, dass auch der Iran mehr Vorteile als das alte Abkommen will, also sollte er bereit sein, weiter zu sprechen. Die Amerikaner sagen, dass sie bereit sind zu diskutieren, wie das Abkommen zum gegenseitigen Nutzen gestärkt werden kann, aber sie sagen, dass dies eine Entscheidung für den Iran wäre.

Trotz der Drucktaktik des Iran – die Erhöhung der Anreicherung in kleinen Mengen auf einen geringen Bombengehalt und das Ausschließen internationaler Inspektoren von wichtigen Standorten Ende Februar – besteht Herr Zarif darauf, dass diese Schritte leicht umkehrbar sind.

Amerikanische Geheimdienstbeamte sagen, dass der Iran zwar seine Produktion von Kernmaterial verstärkt hat – und wahrscheinlich nur wenige Monate davon entfernt ist, genug hochangereichertes Uran für ein oder zwei Bomben zu produzieren -, aber selbst jetzt gibt es keine Beweise dafür, dass der Iran seine Arbeit zur Mode vorantreibt ein Sprengkopf. “Wir gehen weiterhin davon aus, dass der Iran derzeit nicht die wichtigsten Aktivitäten zur Entwicklung von Atomwaffen durchführt, die unserer Ansicht nach für die Herstellung eines Nukleargeräts erforderlich sind”, sagte Avril D. Haines, Direktor des Nationalen Geheimdienstes, in einem Bericht im vergangenen Monat.

Die Israelis sind skeptischer und argumentieren, dass Beweise, die sie vor drei Jahren aus einem Lagerarchiv des iranischen Nuklearprogramms gestohlen haben, zeigen, dass iranische Wissenschaftler bereits umfangreiche Arbeiten am Sprengkopfdesign durchgeführt haben.

Herr Blinken sagt, dass die Wiener Gespräche zur Stabilität und Kontrolle des iranischen Atomprogramms zurückkehren sollen, das das Abkommen von 2015 vorsah, bis es von Herrn Trump aufgegeben wurde.

„Daran ist also nichts Naives. Im Gegenteil, es ist eine sehr klare Art, mit einem Problem umzugehen, das von der JCPOA effektiv behandelt wurde “, sagte Blinken unter Bezugnahme auf den Deal von 2015. “Wir müssen sehen, ob wir das Gleiche noch einmal tun können.”

Die Atmosphäre im Iran wurde durch einen jüngsten Skandal um Herrn Zarif erschwert, dessen Kritik an internen Entscheidungen kürzlich durchgesickert war, offenbar um seinen Ruf und jede Chance, die er für die Präsidentschaft hatte, zu schädigen.

Ayatollah Khamenei wies die Kritik zurück, ohne Herrn Zarif zu nennen, aber er sagte, die Kommentare seien “ein großer Fehler, den ein Beamter der Islamischen Republik nicht machen darf” und “eine Wiederholung dessen, was die Feinde des Iran sagen”.

Gleichzeitig bekräftigte der oberste Vorsitzende durch das Herunterspielen der Rolle von Herrn Zarif seine Unterstützung für die Gespräche und schützte sie gleichzeitig vor Kritik durch Hardliner, sagte Ellie Geranmayeh vom Europäischen Rat für auswärtige Beziehungen.

Steven Erlanger berichtete aus Brüssel und David E. Sanger aus Washington. Farnaz Fassihi trug zur Berichterstattung aus New York bei.

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Politics

Israeli normal says stopping nuclear program will likely be robust

Israeli general says stopping nuclear program will be tough

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei speaks during a televised address on March 21, 2021 in Tehran, Iran.

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

As Iran increases uranium enrichment to 60%, a short jump to 90%, world powers are trying to persuade the Islamic Republic to take a break.

Meetings aimed at returning both Iran and the United States to some form of the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action resumed this week in Austria.

While Israel is not part of the talks, it is a major player in the drama that could quickly escalate.

Israel and its Arab allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, want the US to increase pressure on Iran by strengthening the JCPOA to address terrorism, missile development and so-called “Iranian expansionism” throughout the Middle East Include east.

Iran and Israel were embroiled in a shadow war that intensified over the past month. An explosion disrupted one of the Iranian nuclear power centers in Natanz. One of the Iranian spy vessels was hit by an explosive device in the Red Sea. and at least two Israeli-owned cargo ships were targeted.

Iran’s decision to increase uranium enrichment came after the explosion in Natanz, which the Islamic Republic of Israel has blamed.

Israel has vowed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program if all else fails, and they have experience in this area.

Forty years ago, in June 1981, eight Israeli F-16s took off, flew over the Red Sea, spanned the Jordan-Saudi border and dropped their bombs on the Iraqi nuclear power plant in Osirak days before it should get hot. It was called Operation Opera and one of the pilots was General Amos Yadlin.

“Saddam and Assad were surprised. Iran has been waiting for this attack for 20 years.”

General Amos Yadlin

Former head of the Israeli military intelligence service

In 2007, Yadlin, as chief of the Israeli army’s military intelligence, helped plan a second operation. This was aimed at Syria’s secret nuclear power plant. Operation Orchard was also a success – the target was completely destroyed.

Yadlin said that if it comes down to it, this time around will be very different: “Saddam and Assad were surprised. Iran has been waiting for this attack for 20 years.”

Yadlin said the Iranian program is “much stronger and more dispersed” while the nuclear programs of Iraq and Syria are concentrated in one place. The Iranian nuclear program is in dozens of places, many of which are buried deep under mountains. In addition, it is not clear whether intelligence agencies know all the details about the locations of the Iranian program.

“Iran learned from what we did, but we also learned from what we did and now we have more skills,” said Yadlin.

Military planners in Israel say that regardless of the Vienna talks, they have five strategies to stop Iran:

  • Option 1: Push for a stronger deal between Iran, the US, Russia, China, France, Germany and the UK.
  • Option 2: Show Iran that the sanctions and diplomacy costs are too high to continue on the current path.
  • Option 3: What is known in Israel as “Strategy C” – with covert attacks, secret actions and cyber attacks. Essentially try anything but war.
  • Option 4: bombing the Iranian nuclear program.
  • Option 5: Push for regime change in Iran. This is the hardest strategy.

Given the strength of the Ayatollahs – their control over the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and a powerful force known for their brutality – the Basij internal rebellion is a long shot.

Retired Israeli General and Executive Director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University (INSS) Amos Yadlin attends a meeting of the Security Conference on Manama Dialogue in the Bahraini capital on December 5, 2020.

MAZEN MAHDI | AFP | Getty Images

However, according to Ali Nader, an Iranian analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the regime has become increasingly unpopular domestically, and protests have broken out in the country in recent years. The main reason for these protests is a stalled economy hit hard by US sanctions, which serve as the main US lever against Iran in the Vienna nuclear talks.

“The US has the Iranian economy completely under control,” said Nader. In 2018, Iran had cash reserves worth more than $ 120 billion. Due to sanctions, this inventory fell to around $ 4 billion in 2020, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund.

The first thing Iran wants during these talks is for the US to relax sanctions and freely sell oil to Asia and Europe. Iran is circumventing sanctions and increasing supplies to China, according to the International Energy Agency, which oversees oil production and deliveries.

Iranian oil shipments to China reached record levels in January. Nader believes that by stopping the US doing more to enforce these sanctions, it is signaling that it is ready to make a deal.

The big question for the talks, however, is who has control over what becomes a chicken game.

Henry Rome is watching the negotiations as an analyst for the Eurasia Group. He doesn’t expect a breakdown or breakthrough as both sides try to get the other to take the first step.

With Iran due to elect a new president in two months’ time, Rome said: “Iran does not want to be viewed as desperate. The Supreme Leader would prefer to wait until after the June 18 elections before even making concessions. ”

“Iran play a weak hand, but they are very good at it,” said Rom.

Yadlin is nervous that the US will be too eager for a deal and give away too much. Repeating what he calls are the mistakes of the 2015 deal. Yadlin points to Iran’s successes in enrichment and reaches the symbolic 60% mark.

“The first deal is proving to be a problem. See how fast they’re moving,” Yadlin said. “You could have enough enriched uranium to get you to two or three bombs quickly.”

While there is still some work to be done in terms of delivery methods and weapons, Yadlin has no doubt that they have the knowledge to make atomic bombs.

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World News

Iran Vows to Enhance Uranium Enrichment After Assault on Nuclear Website

Iran Vows to Increase Uranium Enrichment After Attack on Nuclear Site

Iran said Tuesday that it would begin enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, which is three times what it is now and much closer to that required to make a bomb, although American officials doubt the country is in has the ability to make a weapon in the near future.

Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s leading nuclear negotiator, gave no reason for the relocation, but it appeared to be retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear power plant, as well as a strengthening of the Iranian hand in nuclear talks in Vienna.

Sunday’s Israeli attack reduced Iran’s uranium enrichment ability to 60 percent, but it is unclear how long.

Mr Araghchi said Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of its decision in a letter on Tuesday.

Iran also attacked an Israeli-owned cargo ship off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday. This was the most recent clash in his shadow maritime war with Israel. The attack was another sign of mounting tension in the region, but is believed to have caused little to no damage.

The uranium enrichment announcement came when American intelligence agencies said that while Iran has gradually resumed nuclear material production since President Donald J. Trump stepped down from the 2015 nuclear deal, there is no evidence that it has resumed operations that was necessary to turn this material into a nuclear weapon.

“We continue to assume that Iran is not currently engaged in the main nuclear weapons development activities that we believe are necessary to manufacture a nuclear device,” the agencies said in their annual threat assessment report released Tuesday.

However, the report states: “Unless Tehran receives sanctions relief” – as Iran has requested – “Iranian officials are likely to consider options ranging from further enriching uranium up to 60 percent to designing and building a new one” Nuclear reactor that could do this. Long-term production of bomb-quality material. That would take years.

The assessment seems to give President Biden some breathing space when negotiations begin in Vienna aimed at restoring some form of the nuclear deal.

But there are still risks: Iran has a long relationship with North Korea, with whom it has exchanged missile technology, and officials have been concerned for years that Iran might try to buy proven nuclear technology from the north.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Iran’s announcement “provocative” on Tuesday and said she “questions the seriousness of Iran regarding the nuclear talks”.

Mr Araghchi, who was instrumental in the negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and the United States, also said on Tuesday that Iran would replace the centrifuges damaged by the attack on the Natanz nuclear power plant on Sunday that have exploded put the system out of operation. He said Iran will install another 1,000 centrifuges there to increase the facility’s capacity by 50 percent.

An Iranian official also re-estimated the damage caused by the attack, saying that several thousand centrifuges were “completely destroyed”. This level of destruction undermines much of Iran’s ability to enrich uranium.

However, the full extent of the damage is unknown and Iran is believed to be vulnerable to further attacks on its nuclear infrastructure. Until the power supply systems in Natanz are rebuilt, it would be impossible to get new centrifuges to turn.

Iran is expected to replace the first generation centrifuges damaged in the Israeli attack with more advanced and efficient models.

Iran has another well-known manufacturing facility, Fordow, which is buried deep in a mountain, but its capacity is limited.

Iran blamed Israel for Sunday’s Natanz explosion, an assessment confirmed by American and Israeli intelligence officials. The Israeli government has not made a public statement.

Mr Araghchi is in Vienna this week for indirect talks with the United States to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The deal restricted Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting certain sanctions against Iran, and Mr Biden has spoken out in favor of restoring it in some way.

After the United States withdrew from the deal and Mr Trump imposed new sanctions, Iran abandoned its obligations under the deal and increased its uranium enrichment to 20 percent, a level that would have violated the terms of the deal.

Uranium enriched to 60 percent purity would be another breach and is a short step away from bomb fuel, which is typically considered 90 percent or greater in purity. While uranium enriched to 60 percent can be used as fuel in civilian nuclear reactors, such uses have been discouraged worldwide because of the ease with which it can be converted into bomb fuel.

Iran has enriched uranium to a purity of around 20 percent in its Fordow plant, which uses around 1,000 centrifuges.

To increase the level to 60 percent purity, Iran would have to use roughly half of these machines for the new enrichment job. Cleaning to 90 percent would require around a hundred more machines.

In an interview, Olli Heinonen, former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency based in Vienna, said that Iran could theoretically enrich from 60 percent to 90 percent in a week, compared to a month or so from 20 percent.

“It’s not much of a difference,” he said.

“This is a demonstration at this point,” said Dr. Heinonen that Iran has reached the 60 percent level. “They want to show that they can.”

The much more difficult step, he said, would be converting 90 percent enriched uranium into the core of an atomic bomb.

In yet another possible retaliation for Sunday’s Israeli attack, Iran attacked an Israeli-owned cargo ship, the Hyperion Ray, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.

According to a person familiar with the details of the voyage, the ship evaded the attack and was not hit. Israeli news media reported that it suffered minor damage.

An Israeli security official said Israel was trying to ease tension in the Persian Gulf region and has no intention of responding with another attack on an Iranian ship.

The Israeli army, the Ministry of Defense and the Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.

In the past few days, Israel had asked the United States to help protect the ship, an American official said.

Israeli officials were concerned that it could be targeted by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in response to Israel’s apparent mine attack on an Iranian military ship in the Red Sea last week, the American official said.

A cargo ship from the same company, the Helios Ray, was attacked by Iran earlier this year.

Iranian officials on Tuesday released more details about the Natanz attack, suggesting the damage was greater than Iran had previously reported.

Alireza Zakani, MP and head of the research center, said on state television that “several thousand of our centrifuges have been completely destroyed,” which is a large part of the country’s uranium enrichment ability.

He described official statements on Monday that the facility would be repaired quickly as false promises.

Foreign intelligence officials said it could take many months for Iran to undo the damage.

Iranian officials were furious at the vulnerabilities that enabled a range of attacks on the Iranian nuclear program over the past year, ranging from sabotage of nuclear facilities to classified information theft to the murder of Iran’s chief nuclear scientist. Most of these attacks were believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Mr Zakani criticized the Iranian security apparatus for being sloppy, saying it enabled spies to “roam free”, which made Iran a “haven for spies”.

He said that in one incident, some nuclear devices at a large facility were being sent overseas for repair and that the devices were packed with 300 pounds of explosives on their return. In another incident, he said, explosives were placed in a desk and smuggled into the nuclear facility.

Iran has long claimed that its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at energy development. Israel claims Iran had, and may still have, an active nuclear weapons program, and regards the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.

The nuclear talks that began last week in Vienna have been delayed because a member of the European Union delegation tested positive for the coronavirus. Talks could resume as early as Thursday if the member tests negative.

Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman and Steven Erlanger contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Iran to defy uranium enrichment limits of 2015 nuclear deal after assault

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, attends a nuclear deal review meeting in Tehran.

Raheb Homavandi | Reuters

WASHINGTON – Iran will begin 60% enrichment of uranium, a significant step towards weapons-grade materials, in response to an attack on a key nuclear site, the country’s leading nuclear negotiator told state media on Tuesday.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversees the surveillance and inspection of nuclear facilities, of Tehran’s decision. It is estimated that 90% of the enriched uranium is needed to develop a bomb.

The move comes two days after Tehran announced that Natanz’s underground nuclear facility has suffered a power outage. The facility in Natanz was previously affected by cyber attacks.

The Iranian Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, described the event on Sunday as an act of “nuclear terrorism”. A day later, Iran officially accused Israel of being behind the attack and vowed revenge.

Continue reading: Iran calls Natanz nuclear failure blackout “nuclear terrorism”, while the Israeli media point to a cyber attack

The Natanz blackout coincided with the arrival of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Secretary Benny Gantz.

The Israeli government did not publicly comment on the incident. The White House said Monday the United States was not involved in the attack.

A view of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant 250 km south of the Iranian capital Tehran.

Raheb Homavandi | Reuters

Iran’s decision to increase uranium enrichment comes because the Biden government is working to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.

The JCPOA brokered by the Obama administration lifted sanctions against Iran, which had paralyzed its economy and cut its oil exports roughly in half. In exchange for billions of dollars in sanction relief, Iran agreed to dismantle part of its nuclear program and open its facilities to wider international inspections.

In addition to the USA, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and China were also signatories to the agreement.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump kept an election promise and unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in what was dubbed the “worst deal ever”. Trump also reintroduced the previously lifted sanctions against Tehran.

After Washington withdrew from the landmark nuclear deal, other signatories to the pact struggled to keep the deal alive.

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World News

Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Web site in What Seems to Be Israeli Sabotage

Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage

A power outage, apparently caused by a deliberately planned explosion, struck Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz on Sunday in what Iranian officials called an act of sabotage, which they suspected was carried out by Israel.

The blackout added new uncertainty to diplomatic efforts that began last week to save the 2015 nuclear deal, which the Trump administration had rejected.

Iran did not say exactly what caused the blackout at the heavily fortified site that was a target of previous sabotage, and Israel publicly declined to acknowledge or deny any responsibility. But American and Israeli intelligence officials said there was an Israeli role.

Two intelligence officials, briefed on the damage, said it was caused by a large explosion that completely destroyed the independent – and heavily protected – internal power system that powers the underground centrifuges that enrich uranium.

Officials, who spoke of a classified Israeli operation on condition of anonymity, said the explosion severely affected Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and that it could take at least nine months to restore Natanz’s production.

If so, Iran’s leverage in new talks the Biden government is seeking to restore the nuclear deal could be severely affected. Iran has announced that it will take increasingly stringent measures, which are prohibited under the agreement, pending the lifting of the sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump.

It was not immediately clear how much, if any, foreword the Biden administration received on the Natanz operation, which took place the same morning that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited Israel. But Israeli officials have made no secret of their misfortune about Mr Biden’s desire to revive the nuclear deal, which his predecessor renounced in 2018.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, described the blackout as an act of “nuclear terrorism” and said the international community must face the threat.

“This morning’s action against the Natanz Enrichment Agency shows the defeat of those who oppose our country’s nuclear and political development and the substantial gains made by our nuclear industry,” Salehi told the Iranian news media. “The incident shows the failure of those who speak out against Iran and negotiate easing sanctions.”

Israel, viewing Iran as a terrible adversary, has previously sabotaged Iran’s nuclear work with tactics ranging from cyberattacks to outright assassinations. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the killings of several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years, including an ambush against a key developer of its nuclear program last November.

Israel neither approves nor denies such acts on political grounds.

The explosion in Natanz came barely a week after the United States and Iran, in their first major diplomacy under the Biden administration, participated in the new talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the nuclear deal abandoned by Mr Trump, the it as “the worst deal” and a giveaway for Iran.

Talks to rescue the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are slated to resume this week.

It was not immediately clear how the Natanz incident might affect this. But Iran now faces a complicated calculation of how to react, especially if it concludes that Israel was responsible.

“Tehran faces an extremely difficult equilibrium,” said Henry Rome, Iran analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk adviser. “It will feel compelled to take revenge in order to signal to Israel that attacks are not free.”

At the same time, Rome said: “Iran must also ensure that such retaliation does not make it politically impossible for the West to press ahead with the re-entry of the JCPOA.”

Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the civilian nuclear program, told Iranian state television that the power supply at the Natanz facility had been cut. He said there was no loss or damage. But Iran has sometimes offered such assessments immediately after the sabotage in order to revise them later.

Malek Shariati Niasar, an Iranian lawmaker who serves as spokesman for the parliament’s energy committee, said on Twitter the outage was “very suspicious” and pointed to the possibility of “sabotage and infiltration”.

The blackout came less than a year after a mysterious fire devastated another part of the Natanz facility, about 155 miles south of Tehran, the capital. Iranian officials initially downplayed the effects of the fire that destroyed an above-ground facility for assembling centrifuges, but later admitted it had caused significant damage.

The blackout came a day after Iranian officials praised the inauguration of new, advanced centrifuges housed in a site built after the Natanz fire.

Some Iranian experts rejected initial speculation that a cyber attack could have caused the blackout. The Natanz complex has its own power grid, several backup systems and security layers to prevent such an attack from shutting down its system abruptly.

“It is difficult to imagine that it was a cyber attack,” said Ali Vaez, the Iranian project manager at the International Crisis Group. “The likely scenario is that it will target the facility either indirectly or through physical infiltration.” The intelligence officials said it was actually a detonation of explosives.

While there is no direct dialogue between Iran and the United States during the talks in Vienna, the other participants in the agreement – Great Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia under the chairmanship of the European Union – take part in a kind of shuttle diplomacy.

One working group is looking at lifting the Trump administration’s economic sanctions, while another is looking at how Iran can return to conditions that limit the enrichment of enriched uranium and the centrifuges required to manufacture it.

Iran has said its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

It has also said that while it intends to steadily resume the nuclear activities banned under the agreement, it could easily reverse course if the sanctions are lifted.

On Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani celebrated the new centrifuges that will reduce the time it takes to enrich uranium, the fuel for atomic bombs. But Mr. Rouhani also insisted that Iran’s efforts were not aimed at making weapons.

“When the West looks at the morals and beliefs that exist in our country, they will find that they should not be worried and sensitive to our nuclear technology,” Rouhani said in remarks by Iranian news agency Mehr.

The new centrifuges were inaugurated on Iran’s National Nuclear Day, an annual event to demonstrate the country’s advances in nuclear technology despite its economic isolation. The celebrations even included the debut of a music video in which scientists in white robes stood next to centrifuges holding photos of murdered colleagues.

Secretary of Defense Austin was in Israel on Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s Secretary of Defense Benny Gantz.

It was unclear whether they were discussing the Natanz attack.

Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Gantz said, “We will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new deal with Iran safeguards the vital interests of the world and the United States, prevents a dangerous arms race in our region, and protects the State of Israel . “

The United States and Israel have a history of covert cooperation dating back to the administration of President George W. Bush to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.

The most famous operation under this collaboration, code-named “Olympic Games”, was a cyberattack that became known during the Obama administration and deactivated nearly 1,000 centrifuges in Natanz. It was believed that this attack slowed Iran’s enrichment activities by many months.

The reporting was written by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt, Lara Jakes, Gerry Mullany and Patrick Kingsley.

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U.S. Tried to Restart Nuclear Talks With North Korea

U.S. Tried to Restart Nuclear Talks With North Korea

The Biden government has tried to resume talks with North Korea over the fate of its nuclear program, but its overtures have not been returned, the White House press secretary confirmed on Monday.

Jen Psaki, the press secretary, told reporters in an afternoon briefing that “we reached out to North Korean officials” but hadn’t heard from them, and confirmed a Reuters report over the weekend.

“We have a number of channels that we can reach as always,” said Ms. Psaki. “We also focus on advising many former government officials involved in North Korea policy, including several previous administrations. We have and will continue to work with our Japanese and South Korean allies to seek input and explore new approaches. We listened to their ideas carefully. “

“Diplomacy is always our goal,” said Ms. Psaki. “Our goal is to reduce the risk of escalation. However, so far we have not received a response. “

Mr Biden took office in the face of the increasing threat of nuclear proliferation around the world, including North Korea, which has expanded its arsenal of missiles, including those that could reach the United States.

His predecessor Donald J. Trump cultivated a personal relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – including being the first American president in 70 years of conflict and conflict to meet in person with a North Korean head of state – to advance disarmament. These efforts failed. North Korea continued to develop new weapons. A North Korean official said last summer that hopes for peace with South Korea and the United States had “turned into a dark nightmare.”

Mr Biden discussed the North Korean issue with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in early February and agreed to “closely coordinate” the matter, according to a reading of the appeal by the White House.