‘Sabotage’ attempt at key nuclear plant foiled: Iran
TEHRAN: Iranian authorities have arrested members of a network linked to Israel who tried to sabotage a key nuclear enrichment plant, state media reported on Monday.
The suspects “planned on sabotaging the Fordo facility and were arrested by the intelligence services of the Revolutionary Guards”, IRNA news agency said.
Fordo is an underground uranium enrichment facility located outside the central city of Qom, around 180km south of Tehran.
IRNA did not specify the identity of the suspects or say how many were arrested.
But the agency said that Israeli intelligence agents tried “to approach” an employee at Fordo after “recruiting” one of his neighbours, in order to gain information about a centrifuge used at the facility.
Iran has repeatedly accused US or Israeli agents of spying on and attempting to sabotage its nuclear programme, including by killing scientists.
In August 2012, saboteurs blew up power lines supplying Fordo.
Two years later, Iran said it had arrested several “spies” in Bushehr province, where the country’s sole nuclear plant is based.
In 2020, Tehran accused Israel of being responsible for the killing of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in an attack near Tehran.
The following year it claimed Israel was behind a “small explosion” that hit its Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
Monday’s allegations came on the eve of a visit to Moscow by foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for nuclear talks.
Negotiations in Vienna to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers had lately made progress, but they were halted after Russia earlier this month demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its invasion of Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran. Two Palestinians killed by Israeli troops
Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, the latest in a flurry of deadly clashes in the territory.
A 16-year-old died in an exchange of fire with troops carrying out an arrest raid outside the northern city of Nablus, sources on both sides said. A Palestinian in his twenties was killed in Qalandiya outside Jerusalem, the health ministry said.
Nader Haitham Rayan, 16, died in Balata camp near Nablus after being hit by bullets to the head, chest and hand, the ministry said. Alaa Shaham, in his twenties, was killed by a “live round to the head”, it said.