Israel targeted secret nuclear weapons research in Iran strikes last month — report

Israel’s airstrikes in Iran last month destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, the Axios news site reported Friday, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.

The report came as the UN nuclear watchdog prepares to vote on censuring Iran for refusing to cooperate with its inspectors, and amid a report that the Islamic Republic told the Biden administration last month it would not seek to assassinate US president-elect Donald Trump.

According to Axios, an Israeli strike on Parchin — part of an hours-long operation on October 26, which came in response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel — destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the explosives that could surround uranium in a nuclear device, significantly damaging Iran’s efforts to resume its nuclear weapons research.

The “Taleghan 2” complex was already known to have been targeted in the strikes — as testified by satellite imagery — and was already recognized as having been a site of Iran’s earlier nuclear program which officially shut down in 2003.

US and Israeli intelligence reportedly began to detect new activity at the site earlier this year, including computer modeling, metallurgy and research on explosives, that would be relevant to creating a nuclear device.

“They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a 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 US official told Axios.

Knowledge of the research at Taleghan 2 reportedly prompted the US Director of National Intelligence to change its official assessment of Iran’s nuclear program in August, which had previously noted Iran was “not currently undertaking” the activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.

Israel is not known to have hit other nuclear sites in the October 26 airstrikes, when dozens of Israeli aircraft took out air drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries.

The US urged Israel to refrain from hitting nuclear sites in the attack, to avoid triggering a major escalation with Iran, though it endorsed Israel’s move in responding to Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, when the Islamic Republic shot 181 ballistic missiles at Israel, its second such direct attack since April.

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According to Axios, Israel made an exception for Taleghan 2, because the site was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program — which the Islamic Republic denies has a military component, but acknowledges as a supposedly civilian enterprise.

Had Iran acknowledged the significance of the attack, it would have in the process admitted its own violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“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,” a US official told Axios.

Nuclear inspections

The report came the same day as the head of the UN nuclear watchdog visited two Iranian nuclear sites as part of a visit to Iran.

During the visit, Iran’s foreign minister told International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi that Tehran is willing to resolve outstanding disputes over its nuclear program but won’t succumb to pressure.

Grossi visited the Natanz nuclear plant and the Fordow enrichment site, which is dug into a mountain around 100 km (60 miles) south of the capital Tehran, state media reported, without giving details.

Relations between Tehran and the IAEA have soured over several long-standing issues including Iran barring the agency’s uranium-enrichment experts from the country and its failure to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

“The ball is in the EU/E3 court,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi wrote on X following talks in Tehran with Grossi on Thursday, referring to three European countries — France, Britain and Germany — which represent the West alongside the United States at nuclear talks.

“Willing to negotiate based on our national interest and inalienable rights, but not ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation,” Araqchi said.

France’s foreign ministry spokesman told reporters the three European powers would wait to see the results of Grossi’s visit before deciding how to respond.

“We are fully mobilized with our E3 partners and the United States to bring Iran to the full implementation of its international obligations and commitments as well as cooperation in good faith with the agency,” he said.

“That mobilization comes in different ways, including through resolutions…so we expect that these messages are passed during Rafael Grossi’s visit and we will adapt our reaction accordingly.”

Trump’s return to office as US president in January upends nuclear diplomacy with Iran, which had stalled under the outgoing administration of Joe Biden after months of indirect talks.

During Trump’s previous tenure, Washington ditched a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers that curbed Tehran’s nuclear work in exchange for relief from international sanctions.

Trump has not fully spelled out whether he will resume his “maximum pressure” policy on Iran when he takes office.

We won’t try and kill Trump

Also Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that an Iranian message, delivered in writing on October 14, assured the Biden administration that it would not seek to kill Trump.

The message came in response to a written warning sent by the US to Tehran in September, over alleged plots to kill the former president, who has since won election to a second, non-consecutive term.

American officials have reported ongoing efforts by Iran to assassinate Trump administration members — including, but not limited to, Trump himself — who were behind a 2020 US airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, who led the Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a proscribed terror organization.

Over the summer, the US Secret Service moved to increase then-candidate Trump’s security detail, amid intelligence of an Iranian plot on his life.

Several attempts were made on the candidate’s life after the change, though neither was linked to Iran.

Last week, US prosecutors announced charges in an alleged IRGC-directed plot to kill Trump, which was to be carried out by an Afghan national who is at large and believed to be in Iran.

The Afghan suspect and two other men were charged separately with plotting to kill an Iranian-American dissident in New York.