Iran Opposition Claims to Have Found Secret Nuclear Site
Asharq Alawsat, September 9, 2010
Alireza Jafarzadeh, Foreign Affairs Analyst and Iran Expert
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Leading
Iranian opposition members claimed Thursday to have
uncovered a secret nuclear enrichment site buried in the
mountains northwest of Tehran and run by Iran's defense
ministry.
Information obtained by the People's Mujahedeen Organization
of Iran (PMOI) has revealed Iran began building the site in
Abyek, about 70 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of Tehran,
in 2005, the opposition members said.
"This is controlled, run and operated... by the ministry of
defense," Alireza Jafarzadeh, former media spokesman for the
National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a press
conference in Washington.
The PMOI, the main group in the NCRI, is officially listed
as a foreign terrorist organization in the United States,
although a judge ruled in July that it should be removed
from the blacklist.
Jafarzadeh said the information about the Behjatabad-Abyek
site was shared this week with the US government, Congress
and the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
There was no immediate comment from these bodies.
Soona Samsami, who was US representative for the NCRI, said
the Iranian authorities have so far spent 100 million
dollars on the project and completed about 85 percent of the
construction.
The pair presented satellite pictures of excavation work at
the alleged nuclear site, which they said supports
information gleaned from sources "inside the Iranian regime"
and showed what they said were four entrances and a tunnel.
The mountain peak sitting atop the tunnel stands at 100
meters (330 feet), higher than the 80 meters (260 feet)
nuclear experts say is required to prevent detection via
radioactive emissions, Jafarzadeh said.
The mountain also reinforces the facility against any aerial
bombardment, he added.
The tunnel, which is eight meters (26 feet) wide and 200
meters (650 feet) long leads deep inside the ground to three
large halls designed to house centrifuge cascades used in
the enrichment of uranium, he said.
The opposition members said the construction work began at a
time when the Islamic Republic insisted it had halted its
controversial nuclear activities.
The United States and other Western powers suspect Iran is
using its nuclear enrichment program to build a bomb. Iran
denies the charge, saying its atomic program is for peaceful
purposes.
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.
