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Friday, January 25, 2013

Report: Major explosion hits Iran's underground Fordow nuclear facility after it crosses 'red line'

ISRAEL MATZAV
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2013


A major explosion has hit Iran's underground Fordow nuclear facility, where it was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. The explosion has trapped some 240 Iranian nuclear personnel underground. The source for the report is Reza Khalili, a former intelligence officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who acted as a spy for, and eventually defected to, the United States (Hat Tip: Ellen S via The Right Scoop).
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.

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The explosion occurred Monday, the day before Israeli elections weakened Netanyahu’s political control.

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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.
The information was passed on to U.S. officials but has not been verified or denied by the regime or other sources within the 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.
However, this information was not revealed for security reasons until several days ago when sources said the regime’s intelligence agency, through an alleged spy in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, had learned of the decision to conduct sabotage on Iran’s nuclear sites on a much larger scale than before.
As reported, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an urgent meeting Tuesday with the intelligence minister, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and other officials to discuss the threat, and now it’s clear the meeting included the sabotage at Fordow.
While this is obviously great news assuming that it's true, there is still a long list of other facilities that could potentially endanger countries within bombing range of Iran that need to be destroyed. But getting rid of this facility is definitely great news, because the others apparently can be bombed from the air. I wonder who did this.... Heh.