Iran’s only nuclear power plant mysteriously shut down hours after Israel vowed attacks on ‘mass murdering hangmen’
IRAN’S sole nuclear power plant has been mysteriously shut down hours after Israel vowed to launch attacks on its “mass murdering hangmen”.
Incoming President Ebrahim Raisi, 60, is a torturing killer who will spread terror and bloodshed across the world, claim those who say they suffered at his hands in Iran.
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, 49, accused him of being a "mass murderer".
And a government source said attacks would be "planned" to obliterate Iran's nuke programme.
Raisi, Iran's hard-line judiciary chief, was elected Saturday with 62 per cent of the vote amid historically low turnout.
But he is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
His election has angered Israel's new PM Naftali Bennett.
He opened his first Cabinet meeting on Sunday by slamming him, and urged world powers to wake up to the perils of returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran.
Bennett said that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had chosen the hangman of Tehran to be the country's next president.
He slated him as a man "infamous among Iranians and across the world for leading the death committees that executed thousands of innocent Iranian citizens throughout the years".
Bennett said Raisi's election was "the last chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement and to understand who they're doing business with".
He alleged: ";These guys are murderers, mass murderers.
“A regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that will enable it to not kill thousands, but millions.”
Lior Haiat, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman, warned that Raisi was “an extremist responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians”.
Also, a threat was issued to Iran's new leader by an unnamed Israel Government source.
They told Channel 12: "There will be no choice but to go back and prepared attack plans for Iran's nuclear programme.
";This will require budgets and the reallocation of resources."
Hours later, Iran’s sole nuclear power plant underwent an unexplained temporary emergency shutdown, the country’s state TV reported.
It's the first time Iran has reported an emergency shutdown of the plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
It went online in 2011 with help from Russia.
However, Iran send spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Russia as a nuclear nonproliferation measure.
The plant sits near active fault lines and although it was built to withstand powerful quakes, it has been periodically shaken by tremors.
Yet there have been no significant earthquakes reported in the area in recent days.
On Sunday an official from the state electric company Tavanir, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, told a talk show that the Bushehr plant shutdown began on Saturday.
He added that it would last “for three to four days.”
Rakhshanimehr warned that residents would be hit by power outages as a result but didn't elaborate further.
Tavanir released a statement saying that the nuclear-powered plant was being repaired, without offering further details.
It said the repair work would take until Friday.
Bushehr is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.
IAEA officials confirmed they were aware the plant's temporary shutdown, but declined to comment.
The sudden shutdown comes days after the Sun reported on a massive blaze which broke out at an oil refinery in Iran just hours after the country's largest warship caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Oman.
Who is Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi, the 'Butcher of 1988'?
Ebrahim Raisi, 60, a notorious cleric, is replacing sitting president Hassan Rouhani, 72 as Iran's next president.
The hardliner allegedly ordered the torture of pregnant women, had prisoners thrown off cliffs, had people flogged with electric cords, and has overseen countless other brutal acts of violence.
He is also the so-called “Butcher of 1988”.
As head of Iran's judiciary, the traditionalist cleric is a close ally of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Raisi is infamous because of his alleged involvement in the mass execution and horrific torture of political prisoners in the 1980s.
It's reported that he was a key member of the so-called "Death Commission" which ordered thousands to be killed in the massacre of 1988.
He became one of four people selected to carry out the slaughter of imprisoned activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
Some 30,000 men, women and children held in prisons all over Iran were lined up against the wall and shot within just a few months, say those battling to oust the regime.
The latest mystery disaster came the same day the warship caught fire after a blast in the "engine room" and burned for 20 hours in the Gulf of Oman before sinking.
In recent months, there have been reported attacks on Iran's shipping fleet which have been linked to Israel.
In April, Iran blamed Israel for a blast which damaged military vessel MV Saviz in the Red Sea.
The Saviz was targeted in an Israeli "retaliatory" attack after "Iran's earlier strikes on Israeli ships", the New York Times reported at the time.
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The aim is to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by Donald Trump's administration.
They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.