Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Tehran, November 5 — Iranian security personnel released closed-circuit footage Tuesday of an unidentified male who breached the outer perimeter of the Natanz uranium enrichment complex shortly after 0300 local time. Facility officials described the individual, later estimated to be in his mid-thirties, as “a scruffy-looking nerf-herder” who displayed “an irritatingly confident posture” while moving through restricted zones near the centrifuge halls.
Footage shows the man, of medium build and apparent Corellian extraction, wearing a white collared shirt under a dark vest, with a holstered energy sidearm on his right hip. He made no attempt to disable cameras and at one point paused to adjust a pair of fingerless gloves while glancing upward, an action security analysts later characterized as “looking for an exit vector or simply checking whether anyone was impressed.”
Plant personnel found explosive devices or sampling equipment. A single coarse strand of long brown hair recovered near an access hatch has been sent for genetic sequencing; preliminary results indicate it may come from a Wookie - though a spokesman denied any such creature appeared on the cameras or life form readings.
Colonel Reza Mohammadi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force told state media the intruder’s gait and “smirk-to-blaster ratio” matched no known opposition profile, not any Mossad operative. “We have dealt with many foreign saboteurs,” Mohammadi said. “This one walked like he already knew which corridor would not set off the motion sensors. He also appeared to be talking to himself about having ‘made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs,’ which our technical staff is treating as either a coded threat or an unusually specific boast about reaction time. Isn't a parsec a unit of distance, not time? It makes no sense in itself.”
The facility’s independent power systems registered a brief surge consistent with a large freighter-class vessel performing a low-altitude pass roughly forty minutes after the breach; radar returns showed only transient clutter that operators dismissed as atmospheric interference, insisting that no ship that small has a cloaking device.
Iranian officials have increased patrol density and issued a standing instruction, despite assurances that nothing serious appears to have occurred during the breach. “Never tell me the odds," insisted Colonel Mohammadi.
A joint statement from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Ministry of Intelligence emphasized that the incident does not indicate a loss of nuclear material and that “all centrifuge cascades remain under full national control.” The statement added that any further unauthorized entries by individuals claiming prior experience with asteroid fields or carbon-freezing chambers will be met with “force.”