The Times of Israel is liveblogging Wednesday’s events as they happen.
Senior Iranian official accuses Israel of placing explosives in centrifuge equipment
Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was foreign minister when Iran and world powers agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal and is now vice president for strategic affairs, alleged in a recent interview that Israel once planted explosives in Iranian centrifuge equipment, according to a translation of his remarks by Iran International.
“Our colleagues had purchased a centrifuge platform for the Atomic Energy Organization, and it was discovered that explosives had been embedded inside it, which they managed to detect,” the opposition outlet quotes Zarif as telling the Hozour program.
He didn’t specify when the alleged incident occurred or mention Natanz, where former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has intimated that Israel blew up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility in 2021.
Zarif in the interview also decried sanctions on Iran, blaming them for forcing Tehran to turn to intermediaries — opening up vulnerabilities in the supply chain that Israel can take advantage of.
“Instead of being able to order equipment directly from the manufacturer, sanctions force you to rely on multiple intermediaries for such purchases,” he said. “If the Zionist regime infiltrates even one of the intermediaries, they can do anything and embed anything they want, which is exactly what happened.”
“The issue with the pagers in Lebanon turned out to be a multi-year process, meticulously orchestrated by the Zionists,” he noted, referring to the blasts in September directed against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.
Israel and Hamas finalizing details on implementation of hostage deal, Arab officials tell ToI
Israel and Hamas agreed in principle to a hostage deal on Monday night and have since been working in Doha to finalize the details regarding implementation of the agreement, two Arab officials tell The Times of Israel.
One of the main issues that has yet to be finalized is the exact parameters of the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza, and the mediators are still waiting for a map from Israel laying this out, the Arab officials say.
The two officials speculate that a deal will be announced on Wednesday or Thursday in the form of a joint statement from the US, Qatar and Egypt, who have been mediating between Israel and Hamas.
Earlier Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Israel had accepted the hostage deal, while Hamas had yet to do the same.
On Monday, two officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that US President-elect Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff held a “tense” meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Saturday during which he leaned on the premier to make the compromises necessary to secure an agreement.
One of the Arab officials speaking to The Times of Israel on Tuesday says Witkoff managed to move Netanyahu more in that one meeting than the Biden administration had in countless conversations over the past year.
Lev Tahor member arrested in Guatemala as crackdown on extremist group continues
A member of Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish sect based in Guatemala, is arrested in neighboring El Salvador.
Elazar Rompler, who has Israeli citizenship, is being held in detention ahead of an expected extradition to Israel, El Salvador’s attorney general office says in a statement.
Rompler is accused of abusing students between 2009 and 2011, the statement says.
The Jerusalem District Court indicted Rompler for child abuse in 2020.
Another member of the group, Jonathan Emmanuel Cardona Castillo, was arrested by police in El Salvador earlier this month on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and abuse of minors. Castillo had attempted to cross the border from Guatemala into El Salvador near the town of Ahuachapán, where he was apprehended.
Authorities in Guatemala raided the group’s compound last month due to reports of human trafficking. Police removed women and children from the compound and have been holding them in a detention facility since then.