Iran said on Monday that the electricity supply to its underground nuclear enrichment plant at Fordow was sabotaged by explosives last month, in what may be a new example of the way external agencies are using covert operations to undermine the Iranian atomic programme.
In an unexpected announcement, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said explosives were used on August 17 to cut the electricity supply to the enrichment plant, which is at the heart of Israeli and international concerns about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Abbasi-Davani went on to accuse the IAEA of possible involvement in the incident, saying that he suspected “terrorists and saboteurs” had penetrated into the organisation and may have had a role in the electricity cuts.
Addressing a regular gathering of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Mr Abbasi-Davani said a similar incident had happened in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, without citing the exact date.
He noted that the day after the incident in Fordow, inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog asked for an unannounced visit to the nuclear site.
“Does not this visit have something to do with that explosion? Who else other than IAEA inspectors can have access to the inside of the complex on such short notice to record and report the data on [the results of] the sabotage?” he said.
Iran has accused the US and Israel of collaborating to sabotage the country’s nuclear programme by assassinating at least four nuclear scientists in recent years while also employing the Stuxnet computer worm to paralyse Iran’s nuclear progress. An article in the New York Times earlier this year stated that the US led the ultimately unsuccessful Stuxnet operation against Iran with Israel’s help.
The revelation that explosives were used to cut power to the Fordow site suggests such covert activity is continuing at a time when Israel seems uncertain to whether to carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. IAEA officials fiercely resisted any suggestion that their inspectors were involved in such sabotage.
Mr Abbasi-Davani, in an unusually blunt criticism, complained that the IAEA had failed to meet its commitments to a member state to stop such hostile acts against Iran’s peaceful programme.
Instead, he accused the IAEA of “easily” providing “terrorists and saboteurs” with Iran’s “honest reports” on how the Stuxnet virus had affected nuclear enrichment facilities or on how “explosives are installed in the equipment” that Iran was forced to buy from black markets due to sanctions.
“Maybe terrorists and saboteurs have infiltrated into the IAEA and are secretly making decisions,” he said and added “only mutual trust” could help Iran address the IAEA concerns over its nuclear programme.
Yukiya Amano, IAEA director-general, said at the same gathering on Monday that “Iran is not providing the necessary co-operation to enable us to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities”. However, he said negotiations would continue.
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and James Blitz in London
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