What Is Going on Between Israel and Iran?

RONEN BERGMAN, “THE NEW YORK TIMES”: So, two intelligence officials have spoken with “The New York Times” and confirmed that this was Israel that was behind the attack, that the attack was aimed at this subterrane power grid supplying the electricity for the centrifuges, that it was totally destroyed, that it was not a cyberattack. It was explosives, few detonation, remote detonation, of explosives that were smuggled into the facility, possibly long ago, not just — not recently. And they were able to completely destroy the power grid. And that evolved into the collapse of some of those and the destruction of many of those centrifuges. If you put the damage done to the assembly centrifuges facility in July on top of what happened on Sunday, you come up with a significant damage that Israeli intelligence was able to could to inflict the Iranians in the place where they thought that they are totally guarded. And…

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Right, but the question, again, is, it’s obviously human — it’s obviously a human being who is an agent who went in and did that. And I wonder whether who that might be. And, secondly, I really want to ask you, because Israel never responds to these. It neither confirms nor denies. But the amount of hinting that it did is strange. And analysts have suggested that that public claiming and boasting of it by Israel requires a response and retaliation from Iran. So, do you and does Israel expect a retaliation? And, if so, how and where?

BERGMAN: Well, I’m not too — I’m not so sure about the retaliation. Iran has been very careful in retaliation to all the different sabotages and assassinations. Just to remind us, on the 27th of November last year, Israel assassinated the chief Iranian nuclear scientist who was leading what Israel believed to be the nuclear military path of its project, Professor Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. And there were many others — other operations to which Iran did not react. The only operation to which it did react were the naval attacks, the commando naval attacks on Iranian ships carrying oil and carrying arms to Syria. This is something that Iranians are very careful in creating tete-a-tete. You quoted the sources identifying another attack on Israeli ship. And one of the officials — Israeli official has told us that Israel is now trying to keep low level, to quiet down the tension, the maritime secret war.