Iran says it thwarted nuclear site sabotage it ascribes to Israel

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iranian state television said on Monday its security forces had thwarted a planned sabotage at the country’s major Fordow nuclear site by a network it accused Israel of recruiting. It said the forces made arrests.

The Israeli prime minister’s office had no immediate comment on the report.

The television said an Israeli officer first contacted a neighbour of an employee of the uranium enrichment plant and managed to recruit them both after paying them in cash and digital currency.

Revolutionary Guards security agents were monitoring the network and were able to break it up before the sabotage could be carried out, arresting an unspecified number of people, the television said.

The state news agency IRNA said a new agency called Revolutionary Guards Nuclear Command, which it said had been set up to oversee defence and security matters at nuclear installations, was involved in the operation to stop the planned sabotage.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear programme and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations.

In April 2021, Tehran said an incident that disrupted the flow of power at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, in the desert in the central province of Isfahan, was caused by an act of “nuclear terrorism”.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Howard Goller)