Senior Iranian official accuses Israel of placing explosives in centrifuge equipment

Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was foreign minister when Iran and world powers agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal and is now vice president for strategic affairs, alleged in a recent interview that Israel once planted explosives in Iranian centrifuge equipment, according to a translation of his remarks by Iran International.

“Our colleagues had purchased a centrifuge platform for the Atomic Energy Organization, and it was discovered that explosives had been embedded inside it, which they managed to detect,” the opposition outlet quotes Zarif as telling the Hozour program.

He didn’t specify when the alleged incident occurred or mention Natanz, where former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has intimated that Israel blew up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility in 2021.

Zarif in the interview also decried sanctions on Iran, blaming them for forcing Tehran to turn to intermediaries — opening up vulnerabilities in the supply chain that Israel can take advantage of.

“Instead of being able to order equipment directly from the manufacturer, sanctions force you to rely on multiple intermediaries for such purchases,” he said. “If the Zionist regime infiltrates even one of the intermediaries, they can do anything and embed anything they want, which is exactly what happened.”

“The issue with the pagers in Lebanon turned out to be a multi-year process, meticulously orchestrated by the Zionists,” he noted, referring to the blasts in September directed against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.