Official: Western Countries Involved in Iran Nuclear Sabotage

Speaking in a Monday ceremony to open two specialized exhibitions of Iran’s nuclear achievements, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) for protection and security affairs, Asghar Zare’an, accused Germany, France and Britain of complicity with the US in disturbing the country’s nuclear activities.

He said intelligence services of the foreign countries are involved in activities to sabotage the equipment that Iran imports from abroad.

The official, however, noted that under the auspices of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, the whole acts of sabotage that targeted the software or hardware of the country’s nuclear facilities have been detected and foiled successfully.

Zare’an made it clear that the hostile moves against Iran are not confined to the nuclear industry, but also target the country’s defense and telecommunication sectors as well.

“Over the past year, there were several cases of acts of sabotage in the malwares sphere, all of which were detected and thwarted,” he added.

Back in October 2013, Iran arrested four people who were planning acts of sabotage in one of the country’s nuclear facilities.

AEOI Chief Ali Akbar Salehi said at the time that Iran has carried out measures to counter the threat of cyber-attacks against its nuclear facilities.

“We have carried out the necessary measures in this field, and since the outbreak of the Stuxnet virus, the Atomic Energy Organization has embarked on countering such malwares. To this end computer protection systems were upgraded, and we also separated the systems that were connected to the Internet,” he has noted.

On June 1, 2012, The New York Times revealed that Stuxnet was part of a wave of sophisticated digital attacks codenamed “Olympic Games,” which US President Barack Obama had ordered against the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities.