An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime.
Though the news of the explosion has not been independently verified, other sources previously have provided WND with information on plans for covert operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities as an option before going to war. The hope is to avoid a larger-scale conflict. Israel, the U.S. and other allies already have concluded the Islamic regime has crossed its red line in its quest for nuclear weapons, other sources have said.
The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Iran’s nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say.
The level of enrichment has been a major concern to Israeli officials, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has warned about the 20-percent enriched stockpile.
The explosion occurred Monday, the day before Israeli elections weakened Netanyahu’s political control.
According to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow, an explosion on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time rocked the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bombs. The report of the blast came via Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security,
The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast, the source said. As of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the trapped personnel.
The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240 feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable.
The regime believes the blast was sabotage and the explosives could have reached the area disguised as equipment or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site, the source said. The explosion occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium reserves below them.
President Shimon Peres addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, and warned of the danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program – not only to Israel, but to the rest of the international community as well.
“Iran wants to rule over the Middle East, and no country wants that to happen,” Peres said. “Iran is a center of terror; it distributes weapons and terror across the world. Iran is not exclusively an Israeli problem but a problem for the entire world.”
North Korea Thursday warned that it was planning a third nuclear test with an aim to target its "sworn enemy", the United States, with long range ballistic missiles carrying atomic warheads.
The country's top military body, headed by the North Korean young leader, Kim Jong-un, also denounced Tuesday's UN Security Council resolution condemning Pyongyang's December rocket launch.
"We don't hide the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets which the DPRK will fire one after another and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States, the sworn enemy of the Korean people" the National Defence Commission said in a statement carried by official news agency KCNA.
North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
"Settling accounts with the US needs to be done with force, not with words, as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival," the commission said.
Following a series of skirmishes between Pakistan and India over the line of control in Kashmir, officials in Indian-controlled Kashmir are telling residents to prepare for a possible nuclear attack,the Associated Press reported today.
The directive was published on Monday in a major local newspaper, and explained how people should stay safe after nuclear weapons are unleashed. It advised people to build toilet-equipped basements or to construct bunkers in their front yards. Residents should also stock their shelters with candles, battery-operated lights, radios, and non perishable foods, the newspaper said, according to AP.
A report coming from Iran today says the location of imprisoned American pastor Saeed Abedini is unknown.
American Center for Law and Justice spokesman Gene Kapp said Iranian officials claimed they were moving the pastor to provide him better medical care.
The pastor’s family and attorney have not been able to confirm his transfer or current whereabouts, according to Kapp.
The ACLJ said in a statement that the judge giving the order to move Abedini is a “hanging judge.”
“It’s important to note this is one of Iran’s hanging judges who told family members that Pastor Saeed would be released on bail. The fact is the family’s repeated efforts to secure Pastor Saeed’s bail have been flatly rejected by Iranian officials, and Judge Pir-Abassi’s own right-hand man threatened a family friend to stop assisting Pastor Saeed’s family,” the statement said.
The development follows repeated denials of bail for the pastor. Earlier this week, Abedini was denied the opportunity to appear in court for the second day of his hearing.
Members of the Syrian terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra claimed Friday that they had killed over 200 security personnel in destroying a Syrian military base near the Golan Heights. The number of casualties was disputed by the Associated Press, who initially wrote that 8 people had died.
A high-ranking official in President Bashar Assad’s military apparatus was also killed in the attack, according to sources within the Syrian opposition who were cited by Israel Radio.
The base is located in the village of Sa’sa’, part of the Quneitra Governate, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the Israeli border.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned recently that the Syrian military was distancing itself from the border, and that global jihad forces were taking its place.
He noted that he ordered the withdrawal from the security zone in south Lebanon in 2000, and Ariel Sharon pulled out of Gaza in 2005, and in both cases Israel had endured thousands of subsequent rocket attacks. “Who can guarantee that if we allow the Palestinians to establish a state we won’t find rockets there as well, half a mile from the airport or 10 miles from Tel Aviv?” he asked. And yet, he said, Israel must find a way to “put a wedge” on the slippery slope to a one-state solution.
Barak also said the atrocities in Syria had underlined to Israel, when it weighs the risks of territorial compromise and other challenges, that it cannot rely on international assurances that the world will step in at times of crisis. “The air force of a state attacks the civilians of its own population, tanks are shooting… and the world doesn’t move.” Even facing “unspeakable atrocities,” there is no guarantee that there’ll be “enough unity of [international] purpose to translate it into action.
“For us, that’s a lesson,” he said. “Many of our best friends around the world are telling us, ‘Don’t worry, if worse comes to worst…”
“Many of our best friends,” he said, also tell Israel that “the root cause” of Middle East instability “starts with your inability to solve your conflict with the Palestinians… It’s not true… Would the Iranians not be trying to go nuclear?” he asked. Would the Muslim Brotherhood not have taken over in Egypt?
Interestingly, he adds this tidbit:
Speaking at the same Davos meeting, President Shimon Peres asserted that global companies are replacing the role of governments. “Forty global companies have more fortune than all the governments in the world,” he pointed out, going on to say that global corporations are answering the expectation of individuality which defines the younger generations. “Young people are not satisfied by the attempt to be equal,” he said. “They are satisfied by the attempt to be different.”
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