TEHRAN – Iran on Wednesday thwarted a sabotage attack targeting a civilian nuclear facility near Tehran, officials said.
The website of Nournews said the move was foiled “before causing any casualties or damage” to the sprawling center located in Karaj city, 25 miles west of Tehran.
“Investigations are ongoing to identify the perpetrators and determine the facts surrounding the incident,” it said.
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization describes the Karaj Nuclear Centre for Medicine and Agriculture as a facility founded in 1974 that uses nuclear technology to improve “quality of soil, water, agricultural and livestock production”. The area is located near various industrial sites, including pharmaceutical production facilities where Iran has manufactured its domestic coronavirus vaccine.
The sabotage follows several suspected attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear program in recent months.
Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear facility experienced a mysterious blackout in April that damaged some of its centrifuges. Last July, mysterious fires struck the advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Natanz, which authorities later described as sabotage.
The occupying regime of Israel is widely believed to have carried out the July sabotage. Iran also blamed the Zionist regime for the November assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist.
Earlier on Wednesday, Iranian social media carried unconfirmed reports that authorities had prevented an unmanned aerial vehicle from targeting a COVID-19 vaccine production facility.
There are 18 nuclear facilities and nine other locations in Iran under IAEA safeguards. The agricultural nuclear research center is not listed as a “safeguard facility” with the IAEA, though a nearby nuclear waste facility around Karaj is. The IAEA visited the site in 2003.
The UN Security Council in 2007 sanctioned the Agricultural Center. The U.S. Treasury under then-President George W. Bush also sanctioned the facility.
The U.S. lifted those sanctions under the 2015 nuclear deal, although reimposed them in 2018 with then-President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the accord.

Claim of ‘Abortive’ Satellite Launch Dismissed

Iran also roundly rejected the allegation by the Pentagon that it recently tried and failed to put a satellite into orbit, saying it is rather in the process of delivering two orbiters to the country’s Ministry of Defense.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Muhammad Javad Azari Jahromi made the remarks in reaction to an earlier report by CNN.
“The Pars and Nahid (Venus)-1 Satellites, whose launch [preparation] processes have been completed, are still inside Iran’s Space Agency,” he said.
“We are still in the process of delivering these to the Defense Ministry. Therefore, this report that had announced that the space agency had experienced a failed launch is invalid,” the minister added.
The official also noted that following the U.S.’s unilateral sanctions targeting the space agency, Iran was pursuing its space program “across three axes” in line with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s instructions and remarks made by President Hassan Rouhani.
Iran launched its first domestically-built satellite, Omid (Hope), in 2009. The country also sent its first bio-capsule containing live organisms into space in February 2010, using Kavoshgar (Explorer)-3 carrier.
In February 2015, the Islamic Republic placed its domestically-made Fajr (Dawn) satellite into orbit. The orbiter is capable of taking and transmitting high-quality photos.
On April 22 last year, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully launched the country’s first multi-purpose military satellite, dubbed Nour (Light)-1.
The satellite reached the orbit lying 425 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. It has so far traveled 6,000 times around the Earth and is currently placed in orbit located 410 kilometers away from our planet.