IDF Chief of Staf Aviv Kohavi appeared to hint at Israeli involvement in recent attacks on Iranian assets in recent weeks on Sunday, saying that Tehran was “carefully considering” how to respond.
“The Israel Defense Forces’ actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ eyes. They are watching us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps,” Kohavi said.
The military commander made his remarks during a ceremony at the Mount Herzl national cemetery in honor of the soldiers who fell during Israel’s wars, ahead of Memorial Day on Wednesday. Kohavi’s comments came hours after reports emerged from Iran that its Natanz nuclear site had suffered a problem involving its electrical distribution grid and days after Israeli commandos reportedly detonated limpet mines on an alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command ship in the Red Sea.
Israel has not officially commented on either case. Iran has not accused Jerusalem of being behind the electrical issue at Natanz, but the Jewish state was widely assumed to be responsible in light of similar incidents in the past that were allegedly the result of Israeli cyberattacks.
In Sunday’s case, power was cut to the entire facility, including above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls, Iran’s civilian nuclear program spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told state television.
“Here the power has been cut off indeed, and we do not know the reason for the outage,” he said. “The incident is under investigation and we will inform you about the reason as we find out.”
Israel has been blamed for an attack on an advanced centrifuge development and assembly plant at Natanz in July. It has also been blamed, together with the US, for the Stuxnet virus that sabotaged Iranian enrichment centrifuges a decade ago.
