Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi on Saturday accused German company Siemens
of sabotaging its nuclear program, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA)
reported.
According to the news agency, citing Boroujerdi, Iranian
security experts discovered small explosives embedded in equipment Tehran bought
from Siemens for its nuclear program.
DPA quoted Boroujerdi as claiming,
“the equipment was supposed to blow up after installation in order to destroy
our [nuclear] systems.”
Siemens immediately dismissed the allegations,
with DPA quoting company spokesman Alexander Machowetz as saying, “we have no
business dealings related to the Iranian nuclear program.”
The United
Nations has banned the sale of nuclear-related equipment to Iran. Dr. Wahied
Wahdat-Hagh, a German-Iranian expert, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday that
the Iranian press is filled with coverage of the accusations against Siemens. He
said that Boroujerdi is not only a lawmaker but the chairman of Iran’s
commission of national security.
Wahdat-Hagh reviewed the Iranian
state-controlled Persian-language press reports and said that Boroujerdi accused
the International Atomic Energy Agency–the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog
group–of “always reporting false things about Iran’s atomic
program.”
Iran “is searching for a pretext in order to avoid control
inspections by the IAEA and to quickly build an atomic bomb,” said Wahdat- Hagh,
adding that this a “provocation” by Iran.
Iranian news outlet
asremrooz.ir, which is controlled by the regime, on Saturday cited a statement
last year from Qolam Reza Jalali, who represents an Iranian defense
organization.
He accused Siemens of delivering to the “enemies of Iran
information” via its SCADA Siemens program to help the Stuxnet virus infiltrate
Iran’s facilities.
SCADA is an abbreviation for supervisory control and
data acquisition and serves as an industrial control computer
mechanism.
The asremrooz.ir report added that “Siemens has now sent a second
system of equipment to create damage for Fordow but was found in a timely
matter” to avoid a disruption.
The latest allegations of sabotage come
less than a week after Iranian Atomic Energy Organization chief Fereydoun
Abbasi-Davani claimed that explosives were used to cut the electricity power
lines to Iran’s Fordow underground enrichment plant on August
17.
Abbasi-Davani also told the annual member state gathering of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that “the same act” had been carried
out on power lines to Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant near the central town
of Natanz, without giving a date.
He concluded by accusing the IAEA of a
cynical approach and mismanagement and suggested that “terrorists and saboteurs”
might have infiltrated it.
Iran has previously accused Israel and the
West of being behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and of
trying to damage its nuclear program in other ways, such as cyber attacks.