September 12-14
Iran has arrested a Ukrainian national working at the Bushehr nuclear power plant and accused him of trying to sabotage the reactor.
A report in the daily Hamshahri said the unnamed “Ukrainian expert” was working for a Russian contractor at the Bushehr plant, which started generating power in 2011.
The report did not elaborate on the nature of the alleged sabotage effort or make clear whether he succeeded in doing any damage before he was arrested.
Iran has long accused the United States, Israel and European countries of working to sabotage its nuclear program. But even President George W. Bush accepted Iran’s right to own and operate the Bushehr plant, whose purpose is generating electricity.
Iran tries clandestinely to evade sanctions and buy Western-made parts for its nuclear program. Hamshahri suggested such parties are involved in sabotaging parts before they arrive in Iran.
The United States has long been known to have sabotaged parts Iran was buying for the Natanz centrifuge enrichment plant and other parts of its nuclear program, but Bushehr has never been included in Western news reports of such sabotage efforts because Bushehr is seen as separate from and not linked to any weapons program.
Hamshahri quoted Asghar Zarean, deputy head of Iran’s nuclear security department, as saying Sandia National Laboratories, a New Mexico-based US government research center working on nuclear weapons, has been involved in manipulating parts that Iran needs for its nuclear facilities to make them defective.
Sandia was named many years ago in news accounts of efforts to sabotage Iran’s effort to build a nuclear fuel cycle, so Zarean’s comments added nothing new.
In 2010, the so-called Stuxnet virus temporarily disrupted the operation of thousands of centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Iran says it and other computer virus attacks are part of a concerted effort by Israel, the US and their allies to undermine its nuclear program through covert operations.
But Bushehr is viewed as a non-military site by the United States and in an entirely different ballpark from Natanz.