A European intelligence agency, an Iranian diplomat and a Latin American intelligence source have joined the growing list of those who have confirmed to WND the deadly explosions at Iran’s Fordow nuclear site.
Media and unofficial speculation points to Israel as the culprit in its efforts to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons. Several Iranian leaders have said repeatedly in the past it is their duty to wipe out the Jewish state.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in interviews Wednesday with media, said the Islamic regime has already achieved nuclear capability but is not interested in attacking the “Zionist entity.” If Israel attacks first, he said, Iran is ready destroy it.
WND reported the Jan. 21 explosions exclusively on Jan. 24, with updates on Jan. 27, 29, 30, 31, and Feb. 3. The blasts at first trapped 219 workers, including 16 North Koreans: 14 technicians and two military attaches. A Fordow security source told WND that as of three days ago, at least 40 people have been killed, including two North Koreans, and more than 60 injured, some in critical condition.
The foreign services division of a European intelligence agency, in confirming the explosions, said its information was verified by assets in Iran’s government. The Islamic regime is now cleaning up the site and assessing the damage. The agency above cannot be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, which could derail talks scheduled for Feb. 26 in Kazakhstan between Iran and the 5-plus-1 countries: the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.
A high-ranking Iranian diplomat serving in an Iranian consulate in Asia, whose name cannot be revealed due to security, told WND that an order from Iran’s Foreign Ministry was issued days after the explosion to all of its embassies, ambassadors, deputy chiefs and spokesmen that no interviews on Fordow can be given to news agencies and that any response to queries by reporters should refer only to a statement by the White House and a report by news agencies on behalf of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week, “We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible.”
Then in an unusual move, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor emailed reporters a brief statement: “We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with our observations.”
However, when pushed by WND, Tudor could neither confirm nor deny the incident had taken place and would not say whether IAEA inspectors had visited the site after the explosions, despite some media reports that they had.
In fact, the IAEA has not visited the site since the explosions despite media rumors it has, said the security source at Fordow who originally provided the information on the explosions.
In a letter to the IAEA two days after the explosions, Iran said it plans to install thousands of its upgraded centrifuges at its Natanz facility. The source said this was a direct result of the explosions at Fordow. The White House called it a “provocation,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the addition of upgraded centrifuges at Natanz would be “unacceptable.”
The Islamic regime, while preparing for talks with the 5-plus-1 powers and bilateral talks with representatives of the Obama administration, is also preparing to retaliate against the U.S., some European countries and Israel, according to an officer in a Latin America intelligence agency who confirmed the explosions to WND.
This further verifies information provided by a former intelligence officer of the regime, Hamidreza Zakeri, and Iranian sources of the explosions.
Interestingly, in a Feb. 2 interview with Fars News Agency, an outlet of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Sepehr boasted that Iran is “the fourth biggest cyber power among the world’s cyber armies.”
Reports on Feb. 4 indicated that in a major cyber attack on the U.S. Department of Energy two weeks ago, 14 computer servers and 20 workstations were penetrated. The FBI is investigating the attack. Iran has previously been accused of conducting cyber attacks on U.S. banks and oil facilities in the Persian Gulf region.
Iran, through its official news agency IRNA,assailed WND as a media outlet “under the direct control of the CIA” and WND’s Reza Kahlili as a tool of the CIA to expand propaganda against the regime in the face of its nuclear progress.
The Fordow nuclear site was central to the regime’s nuclear bomb program, built 300 feet under the belly of a mountain where over 2,700 upgraded centrifuges were enriching uranium to the 20 percent level. That level could within weeks be further enriched to nuclear weapons grade.
Documents on the explosions at Fordow and further verification will be revealed on WND soon.
