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| - Iran, which on Monday accused Israel of being behind an attack on its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, has over the past decade seen its controversial nuclear programme targeted many times. Here is a recap of attacks the Islamic republic often blames on intelligence services in Israel and the United States: In 2010, a powerful computer virus called Stuxnet attacked Iran's nuclear facilities in an apparent bid to set back the country's atomic programme. Stuxnet affected the functioning of Iranian nuclear sites, infecting several thousand computers and blocking centrifuges used for the enrichment of uranium. Tehran accused Israel and the US of being at the origin of the virus. Since Stuxnet, Iran on the one side and Israel and the United States on the other have regularly accused each other of cyberattacks. In January 2010, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a renowned particle physics professor at Tehran University, was killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded outside his home in the capital. Several leaders and official media in Iran quickly blamed the attack on Israeli and US intelligence services. Two scientists with key roles in the Iranian nuclear programme were targeted in Tehran in November 2010 by two bomb attacks that Iran blamed on Israel and the US. One of the scientists, Majid Shahriari, was killed. Between 2010 and 2012, at the height of the crisis with world powers over Iran's nuclear programme, a total of four Iranian scientists were assassinated in Tehran, with Iran accusing the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israeli spy service Mossad of being behind the killings. In November 2020, Iran blamed Israel for being behind the assassination of one of its most prominent nuclear scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who headed its defence ministry's reasearch and innovation organisation. He was identified after his death as a deputy defence minister. In November 2011, an explosion in a munitions depot of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a Tehran suburb killed at least 36 people, including General Hassan Moghadam, who was in charge of weapons programmes for Iran's ideological army. According to the Los Angeles Times, the US and Israel had led the operation against the Iranian nuclear programme. In July 2020, an explosion damaged a facility making advanced centrifuges in Natanz in central Iran. Authorities initially said the incident was an accident, but said several weeks later that it was "sabotage". jah-acm/jmy/mj/sw
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