Netanyahu confirms Israel hit Iran’s nuclear site, says 'specific component' was the target

For the first time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel attacked a site related to Iran’s nuclear programme last month.

In response to Iran’s missile attack on October 1, Israel struck military sites and military industrial facilities across Iran in multiple waves of airstrikes on October 26.

While Axios had previously reported via sources that Israel had struck a site part of Iran’s nuclear programme, Netanyahu has now confirmed it for the first time.

‘Specific component’ of nuclear programme attacked, says Netanyahu

In a speech in the Israeli parliament, Netanyahu on Monday said that, in addition to Iran's ballistic missile production sites and air defence systems , Israel last month also struck “specific component” of the nuclear programme.

“It’s not a secret. It has been published. There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack,” said Netanyahu, according to The Times of Israel.

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Netanyahu said that “we’ve delayed” Iran’s pathway to developing a nuclear weapon, but cautioned that the pathway has not been blocked. He said that Iran has “advanced its enrichment" and “it still has a long way to go in other areas”. He added that the responsibility to stop the development of nuclear bomb rests with Israel.

As for the other targets during the attacks, Netanyahu said that Israeli strikes took out Iran’s air defence systems and “inflicted real damage on Iran’s ballistic missile production capability”.

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Israel considers Iran’s nuclear weapon to be an existential threat. Iran considers Israel to be the biggest enemy along with the United States. Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel . The US assessment before the Israeli attacks said that Iran was at a position where it could have developed a nuclear weapon within weeks or months after getting the final order from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

What do we know about Israel’s attack?

Even as Netanyahu acknowledged Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear programme, he did not give any details.

Last week, Axios reported that Israel attacked the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex as part of the airstrikes in Iran last month.

The Parchin military complex is situated around 20 miles (32 kms) southeast of the Iranian capital Tehran.

The report said that the Israeli attack destroyed sophisticated equipment critical to the production of a nuclear weapon. It said that the equipment had been safely stored at the facility since before 2003. Iran formally shut its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

In recent years, after former US President Donald Trump junked the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, even as Iran has enriched uranium to near-weapons grade level, the US assessment maintains it has not yet taken conclusive final steps to develop a nuclear weapon.

The sophisticated equipment destroyed in the Israeli attack is required to design and test plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it, according to the report.

Israeli officials told Axios that Iran would need to replace the destroyed equipment if it were to decide to develop the weapon and, if Iran tried to procure it, the officials said the efforts would be tracked.

“This equipment is a bottleneck. Without it the Iranians are stuck,” said a senior Israeli official.

A US official told Axios, “They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”

A second US official said, “The strike was a not-so-subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government.”