IAEA chief: Likely all machines at Iran’s main enrichment plant ‘severely damaged’

It is very likely all the roughly 15,000 centrifuges operating at Iran’s biggest uranium enrichment plant at Natanz were badly damaged or destroyed because of a power cut caused by an Israeli strike, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told the BBC on Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General Rafael Grossi had previously said the centrifuges at the underground enrichment plant at Natanz may have been damaged as a result of an airstrike on its power supply, even though the hall housing the plant itself did not seem to have been hit.

“Our assessment is that with this sudden loss of external power, in great probability the centrifuges have been severely damaged if not destroyed altogether,” Grossi said in an interview with the BBC.

“I think there has been damage inside,” he said, going further than in an update to an exceptional meeting of his agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors hours earlier.

Power cuts pose a threat to the fragile, finely balanced machines that spin at extremely high speeds.

Israel’s airstrikes have put at least two of Iran’s three operating uranium enrichment plants out of action. The above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Natanz was destroyed, Grossi repeated in his update to the board.