Iran official: German firm planted bombs in parts meant for nuclear program

Haaretz

An Iranian technician works at the uranium conversion facility just outside
the city of Isfahan 410 kilometers south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Feb. 3, 2007.

Iranian lawmaker says security experts discovered the explosives in components supplied by Siemens and removed them before detonation; firm denies claims.

Iran accused Germany's Siemens on Saturday of implanting tiny explosives inside equipment the Islamic Republic purchased for its disputed nuclear program, a charge the technology giant denied.

Prominent lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iranian security experts discovered the explosives and removed them before detonation, adding that authorities believe the booby-trapped equipment was sold to derail uranium enrichment efforts.

"The equipment was supposed to explode after being put to work, in order to dismantle all our systems," he said. "But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy."

Siemens denied the charge and said its nuclear division has had no business with Iran since the 1979 revolution that led to its current clerical state.

"Siemens rejects the allegations and stresses that we have no business ties to the Iranian nuclear program," spokesman for the Munich-based company Alexander Machowetz said.

Boroujerdi, who heads the parliamentary security committee, alleged that the explosives were implanted at a Siemens factory and demanded the company take responsibility.

Any sale of nuclear equipment to Iran is banned under U.N. sanctions, raising the possibility that if it indeed has some, it may have been acquired through third parties. Boroujerdi did not say when or how Iran obtained Siemens equipment. Despite a wide array of international sanctions, Germany remains one of Iran's most important trading partners.

The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran's nuclear work is aimed at producing weapons. Iran says it only wants to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and asserts it has been the target of a concerted campaign by Israel, the U.S. and their allies to undermine its nuclear efforts through covert operations.

Some Iranian officials have also suggested in the past that specific European companies may have sold faulty equipment to Iran with the knowledge of American intelligence agencies and their own governments, since the sales would have harmed, rather than helped, the country's nuclear program.

According to Iran, the alleged campaign has included the abduction of scientists, the sale of faulty equipment and the planting of a destructive computer worm known as Stuxnet, which briefly brought Iran's uranium enrichment activity to a halt in 2010.

Iran's nuclear chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, said Monday that separate attacks on Iran's centrifuges — through tiny explosives meant to disable key parts of the machines — were discovered before the blasts could go off on timers.

Abbasi also told the UN nuclear agency in Vienna that "terrorists and saboteurs" might have infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency, after the watchdog's inspectors arrived at the Fordo underground enrichment facility shortly after power lines were blown up through sabotage on Aug. 17.

Iran has repeatedly accused the IAEA of sending spies in the guise of inspectors to collect information about its nuclear activities, pointing to alleged leaks of information by inspectors to U.S. and other officials.

Five nuclear scientists and researchers have been killed in Iran since 2010. Tehran blames the deaths on Israel's Mossad spy agency as well as the CIA and Britain's MI-6. Washington and London have denied any roles. Israel has not commented.

Boroujerdi said the alleged leaks of nuclear information to its adversaries by the IAEA may finally push Tehran to end all cooperation with the agency.

"Iran has the right to cut its cooperation with the IAEA should such violations continue," he said.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING: "Shadow War" Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away?

Global Research
Tom Burghardt

Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.

The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then "spun" by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran's civilian nuclear energy program.

While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a "loud explosion" was heard across the city, but that "the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise," has been contradicted by several sources.

Indeed, some Iranian officials have denied that an explosion even took place.

On Tuesday however, The Times reported that "satellite imagery ... confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran."

"The images," Times reporter Sheera Frenkel averred, "clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was 'no doubt' that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was 'no accident'."

Despite clear evidence that Israel and the United States have stepped-up their shadow war against the Islamic Republic, Defense Minister Ehud Barak "played down speculation on Saturday that Israel and U.S.-led allies were waging clandestine war on Iran, saying sanctions and the threat of military strikes were still the way to curb its nuclear program," Reuters reported.

Proverbial "facts on the ground" however, tell a different tale.

The latest attack on Iran's civilian nuclear program followed a blast two weeks ago at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran.

That blast killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program.

Satellite imagery shows much of the base in ruins. The attack was described by Time Magazine as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

In a backhanded confirmation that Monday's blast was the handiwork of Mossad and their terrorist proxies, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Frenkel wrote that "Dan Meridor, the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: 'There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat'."

Frenkel reported that "Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national security told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. 'There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God'," Eiland said.

The Isfahan blast, as with other recent attacks, were allegedly in response to allegations made last month in a report filed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

However, while the "Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities," the ginned-up report relied on information provided by "Member states," presumably Israel and United States in the form of forged computer laptop documents and other "intelligence sources."

The Agency claims they were "unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Black operations targeting the Islamic Republic aren't solely the province of America's "stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East," Israel. As Seymour Hersh reported last spring in The New Yorker: "In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former intelligence officers."

In 2007, ABC News disclosed that "the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government."

Unnamed sources told ABC News that President Bush signed a presidential finding "that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions."

Congress has appropriated some $300 million for the CIA and the Pentagon's covert war.

In the intervening years, those programs have turned lethal. Widely applauded by "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike, these programs have continued, indeed expanded under Barack Obama's "progressive" Democratic administration.

Despite the fact that there "is also constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran," The New Yorker reported "that nothing significantly new had been learned to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon."

'Shadow War' Heating Up

Iran's intelligence services haven't been sitting idly by watching American, British, and Israeli terror operations.

On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that the Iranian armed forces "brought down an unmanned US spy plane."

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted an unnamed source as saying on Sunday."

Ex-officials: Iran nuclear effort hit by sabotage

Arab News
Douglas Birch

Populations are endangered by U.S. and
Israeli acts of sabotage at nuclear facilities

WASHINGTON: Iran’s star-crossed nuclear and energy programs have suffered a rash of setbacks, mishaps and catastrophes in the past two years.

Assassins killed three scientists with links to Iran’s nuclear programs. The Stuxnet computer worm that famously infected computers worldwide zeroed in on a single target in Iran, devices that can make weapons-usable uranium. Dozens of unexplained explosions hit the country’s gas pipelines, and Iran’s first nuclear power plant suffered major equipment failures as technicians struggle to bring it online.
Has Iran just been unlucky? Probably not.

The chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereidoun Abbasi, heatedly told journalists at a meeting in Vienna last week that the United States was supporting an Israeli assassination campaign against his scientists. His emotional comments came almost a year after motorcyclists attached a bomb to the door of his car in Tehran. He and his wife barely escaped with their lives.

As for the three slayings, Iranian President Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press on Friday that the killers had been caught and confessed to being “trained in the occupied lands by the Zionists.” He accused the International Atomic Energy Agency of being under the control of the US and said the watchdog agency had “illegally and unethically” released the names of Iran’s nuclear researchers, making them targets.

While Israel and Britain won’t discuss Iran’s charges, the US has denied any role in the slayings.
“We condemn any assassination or attack on a person — on an innocent person,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said after the latest killing in July. “We were not involved.” Former US officials point out that assassinations are outlawed by the US, which condones drone strikes against terrorists as acts of war against combatants.

Yet there is little doubt that the Obama administration is pursuing a program of high-tech sabotage to disrupt Tehran’s suspected weapons-related nuclear efforts.

“I have no doubt that the US and other countries were behind industrial sabotage aimed at the program of concern,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department official, referring to Iran’s nuclear program.

Tehran said it is pursuing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. International inspectors said Iran has refused to explain suspected weapons work since 2008. Meanwhile, the US and other countries accuse Iran of making all the necessary preparations to build a nuclear arsenal.

Publicly, the Obama administration has pushed for tougher sanctions and further diplomatic isolation to pressure Iran to abandon weapons-related work. At the same time, former officials said, the US and its allies have secretly ramped up covert actions aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear progress toward a bomb.

“As Iran moves closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon, concerned countries are increasingly concentrating on ways to prevent it from being able to cross that line,” said Fitzpatrick, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Ex-officials said the US has been careful to target only those facilities suspected of playing a role in weapons work and avoid casualties or other collateral damage.

One former senior intelligence official said that the US considered a scheme to use a burst of electromagnetic energy to knock out power to one suspected Iranian weapons-related site but rejected the plan because of the risk of causing a widespread power outage. The former official would only speak about classified matters on condition of anonymity.

The suspected sabotage campaign is widely seen as an alternative to military confrontation with Iran, which some experts say could have disastrous consequences for the Middle East.