Iran delays start-up of Bushehr nuclear plant

The deferral to January has not been explained, although authorities are dismissing suggestions the wait was caused by cyber-sabotage.

Fuel is loaded into the power plant at Bushehr, southern Iran, in August.

Iran has again delayed the start-up of its first nuclear power plant, amid rumours that its computers might have been sabotaged.

Yesterday, Iran's intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi said authorities had arrested several "nuclear spies" for allegedly working from cyberspace to derail Tehran's nuclear programme. He did not specify how many people had been arrested or disclose the identities of any detainees.

Iranian intelligence agents had discovered the "destructive activities of 'the arrogance' (western powers) in cyberspace", Iranian state television quoted Mr Moslehi as saying. "Different ways to confront them have been designed and implemented." Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the country's Atomic Energy Organisation, on Thursday told reporters the Bushehr nuclear plant, located on the Iranian coast in the northern Gulf, would probably not start generating electricity until January.

That is two months later than officials had predicted in August at a ceremony commissioning the Bushehr reactor. At the time, Tehran predicted power generation would start early next month. Despite the new delays, Bushehr still appears set to become the first nuclear power plant operating in the Middle East. "We hope to load fuel into the core of the Bushehr power plant reactor by early October," Mr Salehi said last week, according to Iran's Fars news agency. "These measures are for practice and inspection of the core of the reactor."

But on Thursday, after brushing aside speculation that the latest delay to the project was related to a cyber attack, Mr Salehi said that connecting the Bushehr plant to the country's power grid would take an additional two to three months. He did not give reasons. Mr Salehi had previously blamed "extremely hot weather" in southern Iran for hold-ups to the project. The feared "Stuxnet" computer worm had not affected the Iranian nuclear facility, he said.

Stuxnet is a sophisticated computer virus that can take control of specific software that the German engineering and industrial automation company Siemens provides to clients in the energy sector. The "malware" constitutes a potent threat to the security of nuclear plants, hydroelectric facilities, pipeline systems and other critical industrial infrastructure, experts have recently warned. The virus has already infected millions of computers worldwide, so far cropping up disproportionately in certain Asian countries including Iran, India, Indonesia and China. The US software developer Microsoft in July mapped the locations of Stuxnet-infected computers, revealing that Iran might be at the centre of the cyber epidemic.

The complexity of the Stuxnet computer code suggests it was developed by a team of programming experts rather than a rogue hacker, analysts say. That, in turn, has sparked suggestions of government involvement in industrial sabotage. The US and Israel have been mentioned as the most likely aggressors, especially after disclosures at a computer-virus conference late last week of the discovery of a file named "Myrtus" embedded within Stuxnet.

Biblical scholars say Myrtus - the Latin name for the myrtle tree - could be a reference to the Jewish Queen Esther, whose name resembles the Hebrew word for myrtle. The Old Testament Book of Esther tells of a Persian plot against the Jewish people in ancient times. According to the fable, the Jews thwarted the plan aimed at wiping them out. Sceptics of the Myrtus hypothesis, however, have said the file name could easily be a red herring intended to obscure Stuxnet's origins.

Nevertheless, Ralph Langner, a German computer security expert, believes Bushehr might indeed have fallen victim to the virus. Any enemy of Iran with advanced cyber-offensive capability might have been involved in the apparent attack, he said last week. Governments understood to have developed powerful cyber weapons include those of the US and Israel. "Stuxnet is a 100 per cent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world," Mr Langner recently told the US newspaper The Christian Science Monitor. "This is not about espionage, as some have said. This is a 100 per cent sabotage attack."

Mr Salehi's latest public comments have closely followed allegations by several Iranian government officials of "enemy countries" launching "a new game of soft warfare" to discourage Iran from implementing its nuclear programme. Rebutting the speculation that the Bushehr plant's security had been compromised, Mr Salehi said Tehran took measures a year ago to protect computers at the country's nuclear facilities. Those include Natanz, where thousands of powerful centrifuges are enriching uranium to make reactor fuel. Western powers led by the US fear Iran's centrifuges are part of a nuclear weapons programme - an allegation Tehran has repeatedly denied.

Last month, Mr Salehi said "all the necessary measures" to ensure the safe operation of the Bushehr power plant had been successfully put in place. "I say firmly that enemies have failed so far to damage our nuclear systems through computer worms despite all of their measures, and we have cleaned our systems," he told the Iranian Students News Agency last week. Reza Taqipur, a senior official at the ministry of communications and information technology, said Stuxnet had nevertheless infected about 30,000 computers in Iran, including personal computers used by Bushehr project staff.

Delays to the Bushehr project, however, are far from unprecedentedbut have not previously been linked to problems with the plant's computer systems. The latest delay might equally be blamed on the tightening of international sanctions against Tehran. Russian contractors started building the plant in the 1970s, but work was suspended when the 1979 Islamic Revolution was quickly followed by a crippling war between Iran and Iraq. The project was restarted in 1999, only to suffer a long string of setbacks.