One or more earthquakes have damaged Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility, causing cracks several yards long, according to an Associated Press report based on information picked up by several countries monitoring Iran’s nuclear program.

Diplomats told the Associated Press that at least one concrete section of the facility sustained long cracks but not in the vicinity of the reactor core. However, other damage cannot be ruled out since the information that was available was very limited.

The earthquakes occurred in April.

The Bushehr plant began operation 19 months ago but has been plagued by technical problems.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in February and May that Iran had informed that the site was shut down temporarily, without any explanations. One of the quakes was registered at 7.7 on the Richter scale, and Iran claims the Bushehr site can withstand a quake of 8.0 on the scale.

Damage to the nuclear reactor could cause a massive catastrophe not only in Iran but also in nearby Kuwait and other Arab countries.

Tehran maintained several weeks ago that the quakes did not damage the Bushehr plant, but government reports are totally unreliable.

Iran is located on massive areas of seismic fault lines and experiences an earthquake of various magnitudes almost every day.

Iran has not signed the nuclear safety convention, precluding any authority for the IAEA to inspect its nuclear sites for safety.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated two uranium processing facilities on Tuesday at the same Western diplomats are trying to jawbone him into surrendering work on uranium enrichment.

Marking “National Day of Nuclear Technology,” Ahmadinejad, via video, launched the production plants in the central province of Yazd.

Two days earlier, European Union Policy Chief Catherine Ashton admitted that Iran and the six world powers “remain far apart” from advancing in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

Western diplomats stubbornly insist it is worthwhile to continue talks with Iran, with one diplomat, speaking anonymously, going so far as to state, “There is enough substance for these negotiations to continue.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Israel on Sunday, negotiations cannot continue forever, but, as usual, no deadline was stated. nor is it clear what the United States would do if a deadline were not met.

Meanwhile, more concerns have been raised supporting Israel’s years-old contention that Iran has been actively working towards producing a nuclear weapon.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a nuclear nonproliferation in Washington that Iran’s refusal to allow nuclear inspectors into the Parchin military base raised serious suspicions.  “We have credible information that Iran continued its activities beyond 2003,” he said. American intelligence previously has claimed that Iran suspended work on nuclear development in that year, while Israel insisted no such halt occurred.

U.S., Canadian and Australian officials stalked out of a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog when the Iranian envoy accused Israel of genocide on Wednesday.

Joseph Macmanus, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, stormed out of the meeting in Vienna on Wednesday after Ali Asghar Soltaneh made the accusation, Reuters reported, as did Canadian and Australian officials.

Macmanus earlier had accused Iran of “deception, defiance and delay” in its dealing with the agency.

The meeting Wednesday comes weeks ahead of a renewed effort at talks in Istanbul by major powers, led by the United States, to negotiate terms with Iran to make more transparent its nuclear program.

Western powers and Israel believe Iran is close to being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. Iran denies this, and Soltaneh repeated these denials on Wednesday, calling the accusations “baseless.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC that Iran’s failure to negotiate makes “confrontation more possible,” and hours later, the American delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accused Iran of “deception, defiance and delay” while it enriches uranium.

Kerry has jumped into his new position with the full character of the State Dept. to solve the world’s problems with talk, but the unusually harsh comments from Joseph Macmanus, the chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA, indicates that the noose is tightening around Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

So far, he seems to believe that the United States is bluffing about a military strike and is making a show to keep Israel quiet.

However, the more the Obama administration, sees Iranian nuclear capability as a threat to the United States, the closer everyone gets to the red line to talk with action and not words.

“I’m not going to get into red lines and timing publicly except to reiterate what the president has said again and again, which is he prefers to have a diplomatic solution,” Kerry told ABC News in Qatar.

“If they keep pushing the limits and not coming with a serious set of proposals or are prepared to actually resolve this, obviously, the risks get higher and confrontation becomes more possible,” he said.

Joseph Macmanus’ comment blew holes into the recent complacency of the international community, which was soothed by Iran’s expression of being interested in  proposals by the world’s six powers.

Even the European Union appears to be getting fed up with Iran.

The EU told the IAEA board in Vienna Wednesday that it “considers … Iran’s procrastination to be unacceptable.”

Iran has refused IAEA requests to visit the Parchin military site, where satellite pictures have shown explosive tests probably were carried out for  nuclear weapons capability.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said this week, not for the first time, that Iran is using the negotiations and talks of negotiations as a camouflage for its nuclear weapons program.

Tehran, of course, insists its nuclear development is only for peace and is counting on more talks to erase any American red lines.

“We are committed to continue our dialogue with the IAEA but at the same time we can’t give a blank check” because of Iran’s national security concerns, Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters in Vienna.

Kerry notwithstanding, louder voices are being increasingly heard from the most senior American officials.

Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate committee on Tuesday, “I’m paid to take a rather dim view of the Iranians, frankly.”

Looking at the future of a military strike, he stated, “There are number of means to do that, perhaps even short of open conflict. But certainly that’s one of the options that I have to have prepared for the president.”

Following as string of unconfirmed reports, speculation and guesses, the U.S. has announces that it does not believe there was an explosion at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran.

Last Friday, right wing news website World News Daily reported an explosion at Fordow that led to the collapse of the bulk of the facility built under a mountain near the city of Qom, burying some 240 employees.

The report was said to have come from defecting Iranian Intelligence operators and Revolutionary Guards. One of those alleged defectors, Hmidrza Zaakiri, on Tuesday told Israel Army Radio about the event and its outcome.

“It was a big explosion, and because the facility is built under the mountain rock, it is very hard to reach workers trapped in there,” said Zaakiri. “All the elevators and emergency stairs have collapsed.”

Tehran has already denied the reports that its main uranium enrichment plant was damaged, and now the United States also rejects this report.

“We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “We don’t believe those are credible reports.”

Meanwhile the world is waiting for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which keeps track of the Fordow facility, to state whether there is evidence of sabotage there.

Iran has not updated its original response to the rumors, published on Sunday, which blamed the “Western propaganda machine” for the news.

“There has been no explosion in Fordow nuclear Facility,” the deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Seyyed Shamseddin Barbroudi said on Sunday.

The credibility of the initial report’s author has been called into question: Reza Kahlili worked for CIA in Iran in the 1980s, then was moved to the U.S. with his family.

Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer reported that “Kahlili himself is a frequent speaker at events in US organized by right-wing organizations and those that support the right in Israel … He also compared the regime in Tehran to that of the Nazis, and called upon Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations.”

Currently Kahlili writes books and lectures on Iran. He claims “to still have an impressive network of sources in various government agencies.”

Kahlili has never shown his face in public, for fear of retribution. He always appears wearing a baseball cap, dark glasses and a surgical mask.

Pfeffer verified, however, that Kahlili’s “employment by the CIA has been confirmed by agency sources and an approving review of his book [A Time to Betray] even appeared on the CIA website.”

Now, with defector Hmidrza Zaakiri adding his voice to the story, it appears that there has been some smoke at Fordow, and we only need to find out how much fire created it.