Saturday, September 22, 2012

"Plot to Sabotage Iran's Nuclear Equipment Fails" (Fars News-Iran)

This one is fascinating:
Senior Iranian parliamentary officials revealed on Saturday that German company Siemens intended to sabotage Iran's nuclear program by selling a booby-trapped equipment to Tehran.

Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the Parliament's news agency, ICANA, Iranian security experts discovered small explosives embedded in equipment Tehran bought from Siemens for its nuclear program.

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

Boroujerdi said, "The equipment was supposed to blow up after installation in order to destroy our (nuclear) systems."

"But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy."

Siemens said its nuclear division had had no business with Iran since the 1979 revolution.

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.

The campaign against Iran includes the abduction of scientists, the sale of faulty equipment and the planting of a destructive computer worm known as Stuxnet, which sought to disrupt Iran's uranium enrichment activity 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 several times complained that the IAEA is sending spies in the guise of inspectors to collect information about its nuclear activities, pointing to leaks of information by inspectors to US and other officials.

Five nuclear scientists and researchers have been killed in Iran since 2010. All the Iranian scientists have been assassinated by Israel's Mossad spy agency as well as the CIA and Britain's MI-6, according to Iranian intelligence ministry.

Boroujerdi said repeated leaks of nuclear information to Iran's adversaries by the IAEA would justify a cut of Tehran's ties with the UN nuclear watchdog agency.

"Iran has the right to cut its cooperation with the IAEA should such violations continue," he said.
Many Iranians would not want to see nuclear-armed Mullahs. I somehow can't imagine Siemens selling them booby-trapped equipment.

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