“On … 17th August 2012, the electric power lines from the city of Qom to the Fordo complex … were cut using explosives,” Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani told the 155-nation gathering in a speech.
Davani did not directly accuse anyone of conducting sabotage.
But he said that the day after the power line blasts, “agency inspectors requested to conduct an unannounced inspection. Does this visit have any connection to that detonation?” Davani asked rhetorically through an interpreter.
He also said that the power lines leading to the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz had been attacked the same way earlier. But he gave no date or time frame. “It should be reminded that the same act had been performed on the power lines to the Natanz facilities,” he said.
A sudden cut in electricity to spinning centrifuges can cause them to shatter. But Davani said the attacks on the electric lines had no impact at all because Iran’s centrifuge plants are equipped with backup generators.
The attacks as described by Davani were very unsophisticated and begged the question of whether some dissident groups within Iran might have launched them.
The attacks he described did not seem like anything Western states would resort to. Years ago, news reports said the United States had tried unsuccessfully to get control of the electrical supply going to Natanz so as to vary the supply and cause the centrifuges to spin at dangerously varying speeds. The US wasn’t interested in just shutting down the electrical supply precisely because it was assumed there were backup generators.
“Iran is now able to ward off threats from cyber attacks and the use of explosives,” Davani told delegates at the IAEA’s annual general conference. “Nuclear facilities remain intact under protection from missile attacks and air raids.”
Davani reserved his harshest language for the IAEA staff. He said Iran suspects that the agency is being used by some members to conduct espionage. The call for an inspection just hours after the August 17 explosion was his primary evidence. “Does this visit have anything to do with the detonation?” Davani said. “Who, other than the IAEA inspector, can have access to the complex in such a short time to record and report failures?”
While Iran “remains committed to the agency and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” the IAEA should “change its approach in regard to Iran,” Davani said. Inspectors are guilty of sharing information that has led to the assassination of nuclear scientists and resulted in sabotage, he insisted—an old charge that has been rejected by the IAEA, which says it did not even know of the existence of one of the scientists Iran says was killed.
The IAEA’s indifference to what Davani called “nuclear terrorism” in Iran “could be dangerous to the specialists of other countries in the future,” Davani said. Hundreds of Iranian scientists have volunteered and been recruited to replace the three nuclear specialists who were murdered, he said.
Davani also told the meeting that he had specifically asked IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano to provide less detail about Iran’s nuclear program in its quarterly reports on Iran, saying the information could be useful to “terrorists.” He didn’t explain how the data published by the IAEA on such things as the weight of enriched uranium produced by Iran could aid terrorists.
He said he had also asked that the quarterly reports not be posted on the agency’s website. Davani complained that “the authorities of the agency and the director general personally are too honest and sincere in providing their reports.”
Davani also blamed the IAEA for the failure of a series of meetings this year aimed at setting out a process of Iranian cooperation with the IAEA to answer questions the agency has about seeming military aspects of its nuclear program. Agency officials have said Iranian negotiators stalled and dragged out meetings and raised roadblocks to an agreement.