Iran's nuclear facilities targeted by Israel. |
The
report was published Friday on the website wnd.com, under the sensational
headline: “Sabotage! Key Iranian nuclear facility hit?” It claimed that a blast
deep within Fordo last Monday “destroyed much of the installation and trapped
about 240 personnel deep underground,” citing information from former
intelligence officer Hamidreza Zakeri, who it said used to work with the
Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security.
The
article claimed the blast “shook facilities within a radius of three miles,”
that Iranian security forces had “enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles,”
that the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast,
and that, “as of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the
trapped personnel.” It said US officials were aware of the reported blast.
There was
no independent confirmation of the claims. Nonetheless, Israel’s
biggest-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth led its Sunday paper with the report on
the alleged blast, which it said might be “the most significant incidence of
sabotage in the Iranian nuclear program to date.”
Hamidreza Zakeri. |
Israel
and the United States have frequently been accused by the Iranian leadership of
seeking to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. Israel, which has been at the
forefront of efforts to thwart Iran’s drive to the bomb, generally refuses to
comment on such accusations.
On
Thursday, Defense Minister Barak said he didn’t envision Iran being halted via
diplomacy, and that sanctions need to be “much more drastic.” Ultimately,
though, if worse comes to worst, there should be a US-led “readiness to launch
a surgical operation that will delay” the Iranian program, Barak said at the
World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
It does
not need to be “a binary choice” between Iran going nuclear or a full-fledged
war, he said. Rather, there could be a surgical operation, by which he said he
meant “a scalpel,” not a “10-ton hammer.” Under orders from the Obama
administration, Barak said, “the Pentagon prepared quite sophisticated, fine,
extremely fine, scalpels. So it is not an issue of a major war or a failure to
block Iran. You could under a certain situation, if worse comes to worst, end
up with a surgical operation.”
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. |
The
website, which also acknowledged that its story had no independent
confirmation, said the blast occurred at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time Monday. It “rocked
the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to
airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bomb.
The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had
two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240
feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to
carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency
staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The
source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable.”
The
report said that Iran’s regime considers the explosion to be a case of sabotage
and believes the explosives “could have reached the area disguised as equipment
or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site… The explosion
occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium
reserves below them.”
Israeli Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter. |
In an
interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TV, Mohammad Reza Heydari, the former Iranian
consul in Oslo who resigned and obtained political asylum there three years
ago, said that ”If Iran is given more time, it will acquire the knowledge
necessary to build a nuclear bomb within a year.” Asked whether it would use
the bomb against Israel, he said: “If Iran gets to the point where it has an
atomic bomb, it will certainly use it, against Israel or any other [enemy]
country.”
Heydari —
who defected soon after he was asked to identify his son in photos taken during
the protests that followed the 2009 vote in which Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was reelected — said the regime in Tehran was aiming to develop two
or three bombs. It saw nuclear weapons as “insurance” to guarantee its
survival.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad inspecting centrifuges at Fordo facility. |