Netanyahu Says ‘It’s Not a Secret’ That Israel Hit a Key Iranian Nuclear Component

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an air attack on Iran last month hit a “specific component” of Tehran’s nuclear program.
In a speech in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on Tuesday, Netanyahu said: “It’s not a secret. There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack.”
He did not identify the component but said it would not stop Iran from completing a nuclear weapon.
“We’ve delayed it … but it has progressed,” he said.
Netanyahu said Iran had “advanced its enrichment [but] it still has a long way to go in other areas.”
He added it “is on us” to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.
Netanyahu said he had discussed Iran’s nuclear program with President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.
In the past five years, Iran has increased its enrichment of uranium up to 60 percent purity, not far short of the 90 percent level required to be weapons-grade.
On Oct. 26, Israel bombed targets in Iran and later said it had concluded its retaliation for Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on April 13 and Oct. 1.
Axios said satellite images suggested the Taleghan 2 building at Parchin had been completely destroyed.
There has been no confirmation of those reports.
During his Knesset speech, Netanyahu also revealed more details about the Israeli bombing of Iran.
He said it’s attacks in April took out one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries near Tehran.
Netanyahu said that during the October air raid, Israel destroyed the remaining three S-300 batteries, causing serious damage to Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and the Iranians’ ability to produce solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles.
Iran is currently engaged in a game of brinkmanship with Israel and the United States.
The secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, visited Iran last week and traveled to the Natanz nuclear plant and a uranium enrichment site at Fordow, which is dug into a mountainside 60 miles south of Tehran.
The March 2023 agreement was drawn up in an attempt to ensure Iran complies with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal signed with six Western countries in 2015.
Under the deal, Iran was supposed to stop enriching uranium and taking other steps toward constructing a nuclear weapon in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.
Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA during his first term in office, describing it as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” saying that Iran had violated the deal through its development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
He has said he will exert “maximum pressure” on Iran when he returns to the White House after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.
Last month, Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at CNA, a Washington-based nonprofit research and analysis organization, said an image from Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company, showed that an Israeli strike destroyed two buildings in Khojir, Iran, where solid fuel for ballistic missiles was mixed.
He said Planet Labs imagery of Parchin suggested the Israeli air force destroyed three ballistic missile solid fuel mixing buildings and a warehouse.