Israel supplied Iran with centrifuge platforms containing explosives, top official acknowledges

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Israel supplied Iran with centrifuge platforms containing explosives for its nuclear enrichment program, a top Iranian official has acknowledged for the first time, underscoring the sophistication of sabotage programs targeting the Islamic Republic.

The comments by Mohammad Javad Zarif, a former foreign minister who serves as vice president for strategic affairs for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, appear aimed at explaining to the country's disaffected public the challenges Iran’s government faces under crushing Western sanctions over the program. The comments also acknowledged details previously reported in Israel about a 2021 attack on Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

The revelation, released this week, shows the danger still facing Iran after Israel struck the country twice during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip - and threatens to directly target its nuclear sites as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House next week.

Zarif made the remarks in an interview with a program affiliated with the Institute for the Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini's Works, a publicly funded organization in Iran. Politicians from Iran’s reformist camp, which seeks to change Iran’s Shiite theocracy from within, often seek different media outlets to reach the public as Iranian state television is controlled by hard-liners.

Zarif, who helped Iran reach its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, discussed a sabotage attack launched by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency targeting pagers and radios used by the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in September. The two waves of attacks killed 42 people and wounded thousands more, setting the stage for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in October.

"This is part of the damage of sanctions, that you are forced to receive (purchases) through multiple dealers instead of buying from a factory directly,” Zarif said. “If the Zionist regime can infiltrate one of the dealers, then it can do anything and install anything."

He added: “For instance, our friends at the Atomic Energy Organization (of Iran) had purchased a platform for centrifuges in which (the Israelis) had installed explosive material."

Zarif did not elaborate, and the interviewer did not press him on the issue.

However, it marked the first clear acknowledgment of the degree Mossad had infiltrated Iran’s program.

In July 2020, a mysterious explosion tore apart Natanz's advanced centrifuge assembly, which Iran blamed on Israel. In April 2021, another blast tore apart one of its underground enrichment halls.

A few months later, Israel’s outgoing Mossad chief Yossi Cohen gave an interview to Israeli television in which he all but acknowledged his spies executed the two attacks. The show said a saboteur "made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed” that included “an enormous amount of explosives."

The attacks happened under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel through the Mideast wars since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage. Since then, Israel’s war targeting Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities there.

As mediators say Israel and Hamas are the closest they’ve been to a ceasefire, concerns have grown over Iran’s nuclear program. Since Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from an international accord greatly restricting Iran’s program, Tehran has broken through all limits of the deal.

Iran now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels and has a growing stockpile of enriched uranium. Its officials increasingly threaten to seek an atomic bomb.

Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is peaceful and they want to negotiate with the West over it.

"The problem we have is not in dialogue," Pezeshkian told NBC News in an interview aired Tuesday night. "It's in the commitments that arise from talk and dialogue that we'll have to commit to."

He added: "We upheld all the commitments that we had to commit to. But unfortunately it was the other party that did not live up to its promises and obligations."

Israel, President Joe Biden and Trump have repeatedly warned they will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. That’s raised fears of a preemptive Israeli strike targeting Iranian nuclear sites, something Israel has done in both Iraq and Syria.

Asked about the possibility of such a strike, Pezeshkian said: "We do not fear war, but we don’t seek it.”

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Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.