DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Iranian news agencies reported an explosion Monday in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, which hosts a nuclear research facility, but on Tuesday the provincial deputy governor denied there had been any explosion.
It was never made clear where the reported blast occurred, although there was nothing to link it to the research facility attached to the city's university.
But the explosion-that-never-was, the Iranians say, underlines how the country is being spooked by covert operations against its nuclear program by U.S. and Israeli intelligence services.
The Isfahan episode occurred just more than two weeks after a massive explosion at a ballistic missile base near Tehran killed the architect of Iran's strategic missile program, Maj. Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.
It also came hard on the heels of an Iranian announcement that security authorities had captured a dozen "CIA spies" targeting the nuclear program. That followed reports earlier in the week that other alleged CIA operatives had been rounded up in May.
None of the reports have been verified and the CIA declined comment, although agency officials had in recent days admitted -- unusually -- that bungled operations in Beirut against Hezbollah, Iran's key proxy in Lebanon, had led to the capture of a dozen Lebanese informants.
"The U.S. and Zionist regime's espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from outside and inside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services," declared Parviz Sorouri of the Iranian Parliament's national security committee
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