Iran, Humiliated By Natanz, Claims It Hit ‘Mossad’ Site In Iraq

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The Iranians are smarting from the latest Mossad attack, which destroyed much of its new centrifuge plant, built 50 meters underground, at Natanz. There have been dire threats from Iran about taking its revenge on Israel. And the Iranians were quick to announce that they had launched an attack on what they describe as a Mossad intelligence center in Kurdish Iraq, and caused many casualties among its “Israeli forces.” It was an attempt to persuade both its own people, and the rest of the world, that Iran was able to strike back at once and inflict significant damage on Israel.

The report on the supposed attack is here: “Iranian media spreads report of attack on alleged Mossad center in Iraq,” by Tzvi Joffre, Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2021:

On Tuesday night, a number of semi-official and official Iranian media sources shared a report claiming that an intelligence and special operations center in northern Iraq allegedly belonging to the Mossad was attacked by an “unidentified group.”

The Iranian reports claimed that “Israeli forces” were injured or killed in the alleged attack and promised to release more details and footage “soon.” As of Wednesday [April 14] morning, no further details nor footage has been released.

A report on the alleged incident shared by the semi-official Iranian Fars News Agency claimed that “Iraqi media and sources have repeatedly warned about the activities of Zionist elements” in the Iraqi Kurdistan area.

The report was not confirmed by any official sources, but has been published by the semi-official Fars News Agency, Al-Alam News, which is owned by Iran’s state media corporation, and Press TV, an English-language news network run by the Iranian government.

The Iranian reports gave no details, only reporting that an attack on “an intelligence and special operations center” belonging to Mossad had taken place. According to Iraqi Kurdish sources, such baseless claims about the existence of a “Mossad center” in Iraqi Kurdistan have been made before. In Iran’s brief report, nothing was revealed about the attackers, described only as an “unidentified group.” Nothing was said about where the attack took place beyond “northern Iraq.” Nothing further has been said to support the claim that there have been casualties among “Israeli forces,” even though the Iranian government promised to release “more details and footage.” There has been no release of any footage – not of the building that was supposedly Iran’s target, and not of the killed and wounded Israelis. There was no mention of how the attack took place – was it a bombing, drones, cyberwarfare, Iranian agents on the ground? It was, of course, a fantasy produced by the Iranians to save face, to let their own people and the world know that they had dealt a heavy blow to the Jewish state as retaliation for its attack on the underground facility at Natanz.

It took less than a day for the Iraqi Kurds to deny the story. Just a day after the Iranian Fars news agency had reported on that attack on a “Mossad center” in northern Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds announced that there had been no such attack. A spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government denied reports of an alleged attack on a Mossad center in northern Iraq as “completely false” on Wednesday morning, stating that this isn’t the first time claims have been made that an Israeli intelligence center is located in Kurdistan, according to Iraqi media.

“The purpose of publishing such reports is clearly a conspiracy against the region and its political process,” added the spokesman.

That unambiguous denial of any such Iranian attack on a “Mossad center” by the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq apparently convinced the Iranians to drop their claim – it was being received with too much skepticism in the region, and outright denial in Iraqi Kurdistan, making Iran look ridiculous.

President Rouhani took a different tack. He said at a televised cabinet meeting that the answer to Israel’s Natanz attack would not take the form of violent retaliation; Iran had another, better way to strike back: “Of course, the security and intelligence officials must give the final reports, but apparently it is the crime of the Zionists, and if the Zionists act against our nation, we will answer it. Our response to their malice is replacing the damaged centrifuges with more advanced ones and ramping up the enrichment to 60% at the Natanz facility.”

Such an “answer,” in the form of uranium enriched to a level of 60%, relieves Iran of the need to strike back violently against the Jewish state, which would only prompt Israel to respond with a far more devastating blow, to which the Iranians would not dare to respond. Enriching uranium to that higher level of purity is a move that will satisfy the Iranian public that “something is being done to answer the Zionists” and yet should not trigger a violent response from Israel. And another calculation by Iran might be this: the Biden Administration, already so disposed to appeasing the Islamic Republic, will want to reward Iran for its “restraint” in its non-violent answer to Israel’s latest devastating blow at Natanz. What better way to reward Iran for holding back than to accede to its demand that some U.S. sanctions be removed before Iran re-commits to any part of the 2015 nuclear deal?

First published in Jihad Watch.