A few days ago, WorldNet Daily ran an article by Reza Khalili claiming that there had been an explosion at Iran's Fordow enrichment plant, destroying much of the plant and trapping 240 workers. WorldNet Daily and Khalili are particularly unreliable sources on Iran, so we've ignored it.

But today, Richard Silverstein says that a "highly-placed Israeli source" tells him that there was indeed an explosion at Fordow. Silverstein has been wrong before. Israel's Yediot Ahronot is also reporting the story with not much detail, but a splashy headline.

Meir Javedanfar links to a Times of Israel article reporting the reaction of Israel's Home Front Defense Minister to the WorldNet Daily report.

None of this constitutes a confirmation of the explosion, but the willingness of Israeli officials to talk about it seems to indicate that something is going on.

Feel free to add links as you find them.

Die Welt seems to have a second source.

Thinking out loud: seismological stations might have picked up a blast, if there was one.

Haaretz: Why people don't believe Reza Kahlili.

[This is behind a paywall. When I got the link, it wasn't. My apologies.]

Jerusalem Post: The deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Seyyed Shamseddin Barbroudi was quoted by the IRNA as dismissing the report.

Iran would be likely to dismiss the report, whether it is true or false. But Fordow is under IAEA safeguards, with regular inspections. So, if the damage is as extensive as reported, the IAEA would learn about it on their next inspection. There may also be IAEA cameras inside Fordow, so the IAEA would have a good idea if the report is true or not.

It's looking more and more like the report of an explosion at Fordow is incorrect.

The original source of the story, Reza Kahlili, is known to be highly unreliable, on which see the Haaretz article.

Look at the supposedly confirmatory sources quoted:
Silverstein: "a highly-placed Israeli source"
Die Welt: "einem Iran-Experten mit Geheimdienstkontakten" [my translation: an Iran expert with contacts in the intelligence service. The Google translation seems to get it backwards, but my German is far from idiomatic.]
Times of London: "Israeli intelligence officials"

I didn't link the Times of London article earlier, because it's behind a paywall. But it's being cited by others.

All anonymous sources. At best, this is a weak way to offer confirmation. News protocol generally requires two independent sources to confirm a story. Given Kahlili's unreliability, I would expect two additional sources.

Two Israeli sources, the third ambiguous. Kahlili is connected with Israeli intelligence, so these sources are not independent.

Now we can shift to the question of why that report was floated and by whom. P5+1 talks with Iran were scheduled for this week. Silverstein's source implicates the United States in the putative explosion. Looks like whoever is responsible for the story might have wanted to disrupt the talks. And perhaps they have succeeded.

At today's White House press briefing:

Richard Silverstein considers what this might have been about.

As does Ali Gharib.

My guess is that Reza Kahlili got his story from wherever he gets his stories - Iranian groups in opposition to the government or his own very active imagination - and threw it out there. He was lucky this time and got a lot of clicks. As both Silverstein and Gharib point out, Israeli officials seem to think that going along with the story would be useful in some way - perhaps just to confuse the Iranians, who would have known what the situation was at Fordow.

The last couple of weeks have brought us scare stories about chemical weapons in Syria and now this about Fordow. Both were easily checkable. The chemical weapons story was from Josh Rogin, who many would consider a reliable reporter in a reliable publication, Foreign Policy. The Fordow story was from a clearly unreliable source.

As Silverstein notes (to his credit), it's easy to get caught up in the race for a scoop, and Iran's nuclear program provokes emotional reactions. Documents were leaked to Rogin. The leaker usually has an agenda, and a responsible reporter knows this and will check, but it appears that Rogin didn't.

Maybe I'm showing my nerdiness, but some of the technical facts - that the IAEA is monitoring Fordow, and the characteristics of nerve agents - aren't that hard to understand. It would seem to me that knowing those facts would have slowed down the rush to a scoop in both cases, but that's the nerd viewpoint, I guess.

Israel has now officially dismissed the reports.

No explosion, says the IAEA. They ought to know. They're on the ground there.

David Albright looks at the overhead photos. No sign of an explosion.

Trying to pre-empt the hysteria...

Reza Khalili has another piece of science fiction out. This one talks about a secret site where nuclear weapons are assembled and mated to missiles. Plus laser isotope separation. Plus EMP!

Just keep the earlier comments on this thread in mind when you read about this.