Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Mohsen Baharvand, on Friday said that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) equipment inside the nuclear facility in Karaj, a satellite city of Tehran, had been hacked before the attack there last summer (Massive Fire Burns Factory Warehouses in Karaj, Iran, Near Site of Targeted Centrifuge Factory).
According to Bloomberg, this may be the reason why Iran continues to block the IAEA’s attempts to reinstall its equipment in the restored facility.
Baharvand told reporters on Friday that “there was a sabotage there by Israel and some cameras were damaged and there was some investigation going on.” He added: “We just asked IAEA to wait for a time for that investigation to be over.”
Back in June, Iran’s cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei said “the Zionist regime carried out this action to signal it can stop Iran and to say that there is no need to talk with Iran. But whenever sabotage has happened, our strength has increased.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declined to comment on the ambassador’s accusations, and the IAEA did not respond to numerous requests for a comment from Bloomberg.
On November 23, PM Bennett delivered an unambiguous message to the White House regarding the future of the talks with Iran, saying, “We hope the world will not blink, but even if it does, we will not blink. We are facing a complex period, there may be disagreements with our best friends. Even if there is a return to the nuclear agreement, Israel is not a party to the agreement and is not bound by it.”
