Number of Saboteurs in Nuclear Program is Limitless

Rooz Online

A few days after the remarks of Iran’s nuclear security chief confirming more sabotage in the country’s nuclear facilities, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization also confirmed that such activities had taken place and labeled their numbers as “limitless.”

Speaking to reporters from the national state-run radio and television network, Ali Akbar Salehi made a reference to “the recent nuclear sabotage activities” and said the acts had resulted was the construction of “a unique lap” in Iran which “could take effective steps regarding industrial sabotage.”

He added that the reason the sabotage activities were “revealed” was that they had been mentioned in Western media, adding had they not been published there the government had no intention of revealing them to the public because doing that would make public opinion unhappy and furthermore, “we wanted to go ahead with greater readiness and without the West’s knowledge.”

A few days ago Asghar Zarean, the deputy in charge of security at the nuclear energy agency had said that manipulated parts had been installed at the newly inaugurated plant that converts uranium oxide to pure uranium for the purpose of sabotage.

News reports said that prior to the inauguration of the plant a number of computer malware had been identified and neutralized, after which the plant was launched.

According to Zaeran, “All the destructive nuclear software and hardware had been identified” with the help of the “ministry of intelligence.”

Zaeran also said that officials of the Islamic republic believed that “countries such as Germany, France and the UK under the guidance from the United States had a hand in this and intend to disrupt our peaceful nuclear activities. There is a lab in New Mexico that pursues plans to disrupt our nuclear industry.”

In his remarks, Salehi expanded the charges and said that “some East Asian countries” too played a role against the country’s nuclear program. He did not name any specific country.

He added that the current approach to purchases for the industry was on the basis of distrust and that his agency’s specialists inspected everything that was purchased before installation to ensure their safety and integrity.

Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities have come under sophisticated computer attacks in recent years. The Stuxnet virus is one example which disrupted centrifuge activities four year ago. While it was initially suspected that the virus merely engaged in monitoring activities, it came to light later that it was responsible for the explosions of centrifuges. Russian nuclear specialists have said that these virus attacks could have produced a Chernobyl-type disaster in Iran’s Bushehr power plant. Chernobyl was the Russian nuclear power plant in what is now Ukraine that exploded, contaminating large areas around it and beyond which included human loss.

Stuxnet is not the only virus that attacked Iranian installations. Others have been discovered which damaged the country’s oil industry as well. Other sophisticated viruses that have been mentioned are Duqu, Flame, and Mehdi. Flame is reported to be 20 times larger than Stuxnet and 100 times more than normal computer spyware.