Iran has detained several people on suspicion of spying over the country's nuclear facilities, Iranian media said citing Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi.
"Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi announced on Saturday that a number of nuclear spies have been arrested," the English-language Tehran Times newspaper wrote, adding that the minister gave no further details.
"We are always facing destructive activities by these [espionage] services, and, of course, we have arrested a number of nuclear spies to block the enemy's destructive moves," the intelligence minister was quoted as saying by the Press TV.
Moslehi also said that his ministry was "capable of rapidly detecting any acts of sabotage and taking proper measures to foil them."
The announcement comes days media reports about the after a cyber attack on computers at Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr. Iranian media reported that they neutralized the Stuxnet virus, which also infected computers in India, Indonesia and the United States, on Wednesday.
The U.S. and other Western powers suspect Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons under the guise of its nuclear program, which Tehran says is aimed at the peaceful generation of civilian energy.
International pressure on Iran increased in early February when Tehran announced it had begun enriching uranium to 20% and has potential for further enrichment. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said his country would triple production of low-enriched uranium.
In June, the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing a fourth set of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
Iran currently has some 2.8 metric tons of low enriched uranium and 22 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium, according to the latest IAEA report. Experts say that these 22 kilograms are already enough to produce a nuclear bomb.
MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti)
