Senior Iranian official accuses Israel of placing explosives in centrifuge equipment
Zarif claims Tehran ‘managed to detect’ bombs, doesn’t specify when incident occurred or mention Natanz; Blinken hints at opposition to Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities

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 on Tuesday quoted Zarif as telling the Hozour program.
Zarif 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.
Zarif did not specify in the interview when or where the alleged incident with the centrifuges occurred. In 2021, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen intimated that Israel blew up an underground Iranian centrifuge facility at Natanz, in an explosion that was allegedly caused by bombs planted within equipment there.
“It doesn’t look like it used to look,” Cohen said in an interview at the time regarding the subterranean “cellar” at Natanz, where “the centrifuges used to spin.”

Investigative reporter Ilana Dayan, who interviewed Cohen for Channel 12’s “Uvda” program, noted that two major blasts at Natanz were attributed in foreign reports to the Mossad during that past year, saying “a huge quantity of explosives” were built into a marble platform used to balance the centrifuges.
“The man who was responsible for these explosions, it becomes clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed,” Dayan said. “As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes a huge quantity of explosives.”

Will Iran ‘simply rebuild’ nuclear program if attacked?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meanwhile publicly hinted at his opposition to an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, when pressed during an interview Monday with MSNBC why Israel should not take out Iran’s nuclear program once and for all now that Tehran has been significantly weakened.
“You have to look at what would be enduring and what would make sure that the program doesn’t come back. So one of the things you have to assess is: If that were to happen, would Iran simply rebuild and rebuild even deeper underground in a place that would be even harder to get to?” Blinken responded.
Blinken repeated his recent acknowledgement that Iran has accumulated enough fissile material necessary for a nuclear weapon and could upgrade material to bomb-grade quality within a week or so. However, actually developing a weapon would take far longer, he stressed.
“Iran is going to be faced with decisions of its own of how it wants to move forward, but I think the incoming administration would have an opportunity precisely because Iran’s on its back feet – the – it’s suffering economically in a terrible way,” he said. “Its people are disputing so much of what the regime has done, particularly in meddling in the affairs of other countries throughout the region.”
“This is a moment of opportunity, and maybe a moment of opportunity to resolve in an enduring way the nuclear challenge posed by Iran, but also the actions that Iran takes throughout the region,” Blinken added.

Blinken’s comments came as White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said again on Tuesday that Iran was at its weakest point since the country’s 1979 revolution and its weakness was a concern as it may push the country to rethink its nuclear weapons posture, a concern that US President Joe Biden has also voiced.
Reuters contributed to this report.