Bizarre claim made by Iran official.
We have often seen thrillers and crime shows where extremely novel means are used for spying. But using lizards to keep tab on nuclear installations? Such a plot twist would be tough to fathom for even the greatest of fiction authors. But if a senior Iranian official is to be believed, it was the precise modus operandi used by the Western powers to spy on country's sensitive nuclear programme.
According to Iran's former chief-of-staff, Western spies had deployed lizards which could 'attract atomic waves'. Multiple media organisations have quoted Hassan Firuzabadi as making this rather far fetched claims. Hassan is a senior aide of Iran's Supreme leader Khamenei. He couldn't give out any details of the 'plan' but mentioned an anecdote from the past to justify his statement.
"Several years ago, some individuals came to Iran to collect aid for Palestine... We were suspicious of the route they chose," he told the reformist ILNA news agency. "In their possessions were a variety of reptile desert species like lizards, chameleons... We found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the Islamic republic of Iran we have uranium mines and where we are engaged in atomic activities," he said.
His comments came after news that a leading Iranian-Canadian environmentalist, Kavous Seyed Emami, had died in prison after he was arrested along with other members of his wildlife NGO last month.
The deputy head of the Environmental Protection Organisation, Kaveh Madani, was also reportedly detained temporarily over the weekend. Firuzabadi said Western spy agencies have "failed every time".
However, according to a report in Live Science, Hassan's claim doesn't add up. It has quoted reptile experts saying. " This is pure bunk". According to experts, lizard skin is made of same protein component as human skin, and none has the property to attract Uranium. Also it is not possible for them to sense radioactivity found in Uranium fields, as no data is there to support such claim.
With agency inputs
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