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Israel launches new spy satellite with Iran in its sights

A new Israeli spy satellite Ofek 16 was launched from a site in central Israel on Monday morning - Reuters
A new Israeli spy satellite Ofek 16 was launched from a site in central Israel on Monday morning - Reuters

Israel launched a new spy satellite on Monday that could help monitor Iran’s nuclear activity, as Israeli officials remained evasive about recent incidents at Iranian industrial facilities that have raised suspicions of foreign sabotage.

Israel’s defence ministry said the Ofek 16 satellite was transmitting data after successfully launching on Monday morning, joining an array of sequentially named spy satellites Israel has placed into orbit since 1988. “The investment of the state of Israel in space technology is considered essential and strategic for intelligence purposes,” an Israeli defence official said.

The addition of another satellite would improve Israel’s intelligence gathering speed, said Amnon Harari, the head of the defence ministry's space and satellite programme. “Once you have more than one satellite in parallel in the sky, you achieve better visit times over the targets of interest," he said.

"Iran is investing a lot into building its space power and programme,” he added, referring to Tehran successfully launching its own military satellite in April after months of failures. “The effort is there and we should assume that eventually, they will reach a significant level in this area."

Israel's launch came the day after Iran acknowledged that an unexplained fire at the underground Natanz nuclear plant last Thursday caused significant damage to its main uranium enrichment facility and could slow its production of advanced centrifuges.

The spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Keivan Khosravi said the “cause of the accident” at the centrifuge assembly plant in central Isfahan province had been identified but did not immediately offer more information “due to security considerations”.

Other Iranian facilities have reported mysterious incidents recently, including a fire at a power station in southwest Iran on Saturday, an explosion at a medical clinic north of Tehran that killed 19 people last Tuesday, and an explosion at a missile facility near Tehran on June 26.

Israel has previously shown itself capable of carrying out operations in Iran, including the brazen theft of half a tonne of secret nuclear documents from a Tehran warehouse in 2018,  though Israeli officials do not normally confirm covert activities.

When asked about the Natanz fire on Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said “we take actions that are better left unsaid,” and Defence Minister Benny Gantz told Army Radio that “not everything that happens in Iran is necessarily related to us”.

“There is a growing sense that this is not all a coincidence,” said Holly Dagres, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, calling Mr Gantz’s comment “more of a non-denial denial”.

Iranian state news agency IRNA published an article on Thursday addressing what it called the possibility of sabotage by Israel and the United States, although it avoided accusing either directly. “So far Iran has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations,” IRNA said. “But the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the U.S., means that strategy ... should be revised.”

Israel is believed to be the region’s sole nuclear power and has pledged never to allow its arch-enemy Iran obtain atomic weapons. Iran denies seeking to develop an atomic bomb, saying its nuclear programme is peaceful.

However since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, Iran has walked back on a number of commitments it made under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, including enriching uranium beyond levels set by the deal.

If Iranian facilities were shown to have been attacked, “this is only going to increase the Iranian government’s push to take its nuclear programme underground,” Ms Dagres said.