A series of mysterious explosions and fires in apartment buildings, oil refineries and factories across Iran in the last two weeks have set many Iranians on edge.
Publicly, Iranian officials are trying to calm the nation’s nerves, attributing the blasts to things like garbage fires and aging infrastructure.
Privately, they’re labeling the events sabotage and pointing the finger at Israel, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
“The Iranian authorities are wary of publicly declaring their suspicions about Israel’s potential involvement because, they said, Iran does not want to corner itself into having to retaliate against Israel,” the Times said.
The report was based on interviews with four anonymous officials, three of them Iranian, including a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terror group, and a European official who deals with Iran.
None provided evidence to back up their claims that Israel was behind the near-daily explosions.
Israeli officials didn’t comment for the report, but the Times pointed out that Mossad director David Barnea said in late June that the agency would continue to operate inside Iran.
“We will be there, like we have been there,” he said. “We worked for months and years to do all the right actions to get to the right moment.”
The IRGC member said that the overall effect of the ongoing explosions was contributing to growing anxiety among officials and Iranians in general.
The three Iranians said they believed that many of the explosions were sabotage. The European official also suspected Israeli involvement, based on past actions it has taken in Iran.
Iranian officials are blaming gas leaks for most of the fires. The leaks are caused by “worn-out equipment, the use of substandard gas appliances and disregard for safety principles,” the director of Tehran’s fire and public safety departments, Ghodratollah Mohammadi, told state media.
But Iranian officials haven’t explained the rate of explosions, which have reached one to two a day, the Times reported.
Iranians have turned to humor to cope with the stress, the paper reported. On social media, they have shared images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dressed up in the uniform of Iran’s national gas company.
