A blow to nuclear bomb making of Ayatollahs in Iran
Fox News, February 28, 2008
Transcript
The bombshell revelations by
Iran's parliament-in-exile, the National Council of
Resistance (NCRI), about a working nuclear warhead
development facility and a new command and control center
for Iran's nuclear bomb-making only two days before the
release of the report by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) proved to be a major blow to the ruling
Ayatollahs in Tehran.
In a news conference in Brussels on February 20, 2008,
Mohammad Mohaddessin, the Chairman of the NCRI's Foreign
Affairs Committee, announced that in April 2007, the Iranian
regime's nuclear project entered a new phase. For the first
time, a command and control center, known as Mojdeh site,
was established to head up the drive to complete a nuclear
bomb. A development facility called the "Field for Expansion
of Deployment of Advanced Technologies" was set up in the
Lavizan 2 site (see satellite imagery).
Mojdeh site is managed by a scientist named Mohsen
Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi. A nuclear physicist attached to the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), Mahabadi reports
directly to the defense minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najar.
Many of the activities at the site are disguised as part of
the IRGC's Malek Ashtar University, which acts more as the
support center doing research and development of weapons for
the Mojdeh site than a university.
Working on and coordinating activities on a neutron
initiator; producing Polunium-210 and Beryllium for the
trigger for an atomic bomb; casting and machining of uranium
metals; research on the fissile material needed for the
production of a bomb; laser enrichment of uranium; and
research on high explosives, radiation detection, and
protection against radioactive materials are among the
activities carried out at the Mojdeh site.
The secret facility to make nuclear warheads is located at
Khojir, a Defense Ministry missile site southeast of Tehran.
This is a vast, 120-square kilometer area southeast of
Tehran. It is riddled with various facilities and tunnels
dedicated to nuclear and missile projects (see satellite
imagery).
Khojir is heavily secured military area. Construction of
secret military sites in this location began in 1989. This
location works primarily on the manufacturing of missiles
such as Shahab 3. However, new, detailed information reveals
that Tehran is building nuclear warheads at this site. The
project was codenamed 8500 and nicknamed the Alireza Nori
Industry (see satellite imagery). The warheads are being
designed for installation on Shahab 3 missiles, the most
advanced version of which has a range of 2,000 kilometers.
In its February 20 news conference, the NCRI announced that
the full details of the latest information obtained by the
Resistance network inside Iran had been provided to the
IAEA.
The Tehran regime's reaction to last week's timely
revelations demonstrated what a blow it had been dealt.
Ahmadinejad's anguish was evident in his remarks to the
state-run news agencies about this latest political defeat
resulting from the opposition's devastating disclosures:
“The nuclear issue in its new form began in the beginning of
the summer of 2002, when [the Iranian Mojahedin (PMOI/MEK)],
published a report on the Natanz and Arak nuclear sites. The
International Atomic Energy Agency got involved… and
resolutions were adopted one after the other.”
Then on Monday, Mohammad Khazee, the Ayatollahs' ambassador
to the United Nations, dedicated almost his entire interview
with journalists to complaints about the decisive role the
main Iranian opposition has played in exposing the
Ayatollahs' nuclear sites.
Simon Smith, the chief British delegate to the International
Atomic Energy Agency, said earlier this week that based on
information presented by the IAEA to the IAEA's 35 board
member nations, Iran may have continued work on nuclear
weapons past 2003, the year U.S. intelligence reports
indicated such activities had stopped. Earlier, Director of
National Intelligence Michael McConnell said there was no
doubt that Iran had the scientific know-how, the technical
capacity, and the industrial capability to develop nuclear
weapons at some future point.
The NCRI's crucial revelations last week establish that the
Ayatollahs' regime has indeed expedited its nuclear weapons
activities, and that the IRGC has assumed command of a much
larger segment of the nuclear drive. The United Nations
Security Council should waste no time in adopting a decisive
resolution to address Tehran's persistent violation of prior
UN Security Resolutions. At the same time, a growing number
of members of Congress from both sides of the isle believe
that sanctions should be coupled with political pressure.
The best option? Reach out to the Iranian opposition and
remove all restrictions against them as they heighten their
efforts to implement fundamental change in Iran.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
