BICOM

The Times reports this morning that there has been an explosion at the Fordow nuclear plant in Iran, where it is believed new centrifuges were added towards the end of last year increasing Iran’s enrichment capabilities.

There is particular international concern about the Fordow facility, as it is well hidden, built into the side of a mountain and uranium there is thought to be refined to a fissile concentration of twenty per cent. This would make the uranium only a small technical step away from weapons-grade material. Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow plant in 2009 after learning that Western intelligence services had detected it.

The Times quotes an anonymous Israeli intelligence official who believes that an explosion occurred last week at Fordow, but added, “We are still in the preliminary stages of understanding what happened and how significant it is,” explaining that he didn’t know if the explosion was caused by “sabotage or [an] accident.” The report claims that there are suggestions of extensive structural damage and that around 200 workers had been trapped inside the facility.

The Times also references a report on the US-based WND website, which quotes Reza Khalili, a former Iranian Revolutionary Guardsman turned CIA informer, who claims that “The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of fifteen miles.”  However, the Deputy Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi, yesterday told the Iranian state news agency IRNA “The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome.”