Exposing the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program- An unrelenting untold undertaking by the Resistance
Overview
Developing or procuring nuclear weapons is a key pillar of the Iranian regime’s survival strategy. The Khomeini regime initially declared it would not pursue nuclear energy, and it abandoned elements of the existing nuclear program such as the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was already under construction by German firms at the time of the Shah. However, the mullahs soon realized that a young and vibrant Iranian society and a burgeoning democratic opposition represented serious challenges to their backward rule. Unable to lead Iran and manage a population that was newly freed from monarchist oppression, the mullahs adopted a new strategy that ultimately led them to pursue nuclear weapons technology as an insurance policy against their eventual downfall.
First, though, they instigated war and strife in neighboring countries on the pretense of exporting the revolution. This was accompanied by severe repression at home, under the banner of religious authorities. The pursuit of nuclear weapons capability formed the last of three pillars that the regime’s key officials deemed necessary to maintain their grip on power. Nuclear weapons would also support the regime’s pursuit of regional hegemony and its intention to blackmail foreign interlocutors, secure economic and political concessions, and force international acceptance of the mullahs’ rule.
Of course, The regime has publicly insisted that its nuclear activities are peaceful and intended mainly for energy purposes. But these claims are belied by Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves, which provide a very inexpensive energy source that some experts believe could last for the next 300 years. By any assessment, nuclear energy is not cost-efficient in Iran, and the regime would need some further incentive to pursue associated technologies.
Furthermore, if the regime’s intentions were as innocent as officials have claimed, the regime would not have actively concealed the details of their nuclear program for nearly two decades. The first significant challenge to that concealment came from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in August 2002, when intelligence reports from the group revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment site and the Arak heavy water facility. Subsequent revelations unveiled the extent to which the regime’s clandestine nuclear weapons work had advanced, and this triggered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
That in turn prompted further action by the United Nations Security Council, without which the Iranian regime would have surely obtained a nuclear weapon by now, and the fate of the Middle East would have been forever altered. The Iranian Resistance is proud of having contributed to this outcome, and it remains committed to the historic task of preventing an aggressive, virulently sectarian and repression theocracy from developing weapons of mass destruction and using them to threaten its own people, the surrounding region, and the world.
The role of Iranian resistance in revealing the regime’s nuclear program
The Iranian regime started its drive to nuclear weapons in 1983. From the outset, it was evident to the Resistance that the mullahs would pursue this goal at astronomical cost and to the detriment of the Iranian people. The campaign to expose the nuclear weapons program required considerable resources and entailed a great deal of risk as Resistance operatives obtained, verified, and disseminated information. The MEK relied on a vast network of sources in the Iranian regime’s civilian and military institutions, as activists scrutinized the nuclear program and its various elements from 1991 onward. Over three decades, the MEK has made more than one hundred revelations of secret sites, projects, procurements, and key figures involved in the regime’s nuclear program, often in the face of incredulity and annoyance by the world powers seeking accommodation with the regime. However, that incredulity has generally vanished as evidence emerged to corroborate the Resistance’s warnings.
Those warnings concern various aspects of the nuclear project, including enrichment, bomb components, and missile delivery systems. The MEK’s information leads to no other conclusion than that The regime has worked systematically on various stages of weaponization, with the goal of obtaining both a nuclear warhead and the means of delivering it to distant foreign adversaries.
The mullahs have invariably responded to these revelations by targeting both the Iranian people and the international community with false narratives backed up by stage-managed demonstrations, destruction of evidence and so on. At several critical junctures, the regime tried to further deceive the international community and the IAEA by altering the focus of its work but continuing the nuclear weapons project in a different form. But the Iranian Resistance has repeatedly interfered with those plans by obtaining details of the new strategy and exposing the regime’s latest plots.
International attention to those findings has been inconsistent, but various experts on Iranian affairs and intelligence gathering have highlighted the value of the Resistance as a source of information about developments that may be occurring outside of public view from the West. Frank Pabian, a senior adviser on nuclear nonproliferation at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was quoted in a 2010 New York Times article as saying of the PMOI, “They’re right 90 percent of the time.” And in an earlier interview with the same publication, a senior UN official declared, “This organization has been extremely on the mark in the past. They are a group that seems to be privy to very solid and insider information.”
Furthermore, then-US President George W. Bush cited the Resistance in a 2005 press conference and emphasized their disclosures had had a significant impact on the political will of the Western world where Iran’s nuclear ambitions are concerned. Those ambitions had been exposed, he said, “not because of their compliance with the IAEA or NPT, but because a dissident group pointed it out to the world … And as a result of those suspicions, we came together with friends and allies to seek a guarantee that they wouldn’t use any nuclear program to make weapons.”
Key Dates and Select Resistance Disclosures
June 1991: During a trip to Washington, DC, Mohammad Mohaddessin, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, exposed that Iran had begun working on a nuclear weapon.[1] He revealed that the regime’s preliminary nuclear facility is located in Mo’alm Kalaye (northern Qazvin, 120 kilometers northwest of The regime). The top-secret project was code-named “Great Plan” (also known as the “Alamout Plan”) and its initial budget was $200 million. According to the Resistance information, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) relocated the local inhabitants to clear the area for construction of this site. The Iranian Resistance made several other revelations in 1992 and exposed other plans by the regime.• October 1992: The Iranian Resistance revealed that the regime had bought three nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan. According to the information obtained from inside the Iranian regime the warheads were paid for but had not been delivered yet. The Kazak Ambassador to Washington (who was in charge of its nuclear program in 1992) confirmed in an interview on November 2, 1996 that the regime had attempted to buy nuclear weapons but the shipment was stopped prior to the delivery.
Arak heavy water facility
August 14, 2002: In a press conference in Washington, the NCRI revealed the existence of two secret sites (uranium enrichment site in Natanz and plutonium-producing heavy water facility in Arak) and details of the regime’s nuclear activities, which had remained secret for 17 years. Information on the Natanz site included the existence of two 25,000 square meters of underground halls. Eventually, international pressure forced the Iranian regime to show the two sites to the IAEA, and the big secret of the mullahs’ nuclear program was exposed. The revelation was a game changer in the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Uranium enrichment site in Natanz
February 20, 2003: The NCRI exposed the Kala-Electric site in Abali, The regime Province. This site was functioning under the guise of a clock manufacturing company and was used for secret testing of assembled centrifuges. The regime changed the building’s entire appearance to hide its true nature. After months of pushing, when IAEA gained access to the site, particles of highly-enriched uranium were also found at the site, prompting many questions about the nature of the mullahs’ nuclear program.
Kala-Electric site in Abali in Tehran Province
May 27, 2003: The NCRI exposed the Iranian regime’s research on using Laser for a weaponization aspect of the nuclear program. The researched was conducted at Lashkarabad site in the vicinity of Karaj (west of Tehran). IAEA inspectors verified this when they visited the site on June 2004. The regime was eventually forced to stop the work at Lashkarabad.• December 20, 2005: In a press conference in Paris, Mohammad Mohaddessin revealed details about a secret nuclear facility and an underground tunnel used for nuclear projects in the vicinity of Qom (central Iran). He noted that construction had begun in 2000 by a specialist engineering division of the IRGC. Nearly four years after the NCRI’s press conference, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed the existence of the same secret site, Fordow. Their joint press conference on September 25, 2009 took place only after Iranian authorities acknowledged its existence to the IAEA, recognizing that the NCRI’s revelations had rendered Fordow an open secret.
Fordow secret site
December 23, 2006: The passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1737 imposed sanctions on 22 individuals and entities who had played significant roles in the Iranian regime’s nuclear and missile programs. Fifteen of these, or 70 percent, had been identified by the NCRI between 2003 and 2005.• February 20, 2008: In a Brussels press conference, the NCRI exposed the research and work on a nuclear warhead in Nouri Industries of Hemmat Missile Industrial Group. The IAEA subsequently made some corroborating evidence available to member states, including a video clip of a re-entry vehicle for the Shahab-3 ballistic missile.
September 24 2009: In a press conference in Paris, the NCRI exposed the location of research and development related to detonators for nuclear weapons. The research center and surrounding area belonged to an entity solely responsible for this aspect of the nuclear program, namely the “Research Center for Explosion and Impact.” Known in Farsi as Markaz-e Tahghighat va Tose’e Fanavari-e Enfejar va Zarbeh and abbreviated as METFAZ, the center is affiliated with the Ministry of Defense. Its site on the banks of the Jajrood River, east of Tehran, was named for the nearby village of Sanjarian. As well as designing high-explosive detonators, METFAZ was actively manufacturing components for those systems at the time of the revelation.
Research Center for Explosion and Impact-METFAZ
• April 21, 2017: In a press conference in Washington, the NCRI noted that METFAZ had moved its main experiments to a new location, which it was trying to keep secret. The new location. Codenamed Pazhouheshkadeh, or Research Academy, the facility is located at Plan 6 of the Parchin site, in eastern Tehran.
• May 7, 2019: The Institute for Science and International Security and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies released the findings of a joint study titled “Shock Wave Generator for Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program.” The report confirmed the NCRI’s revelations from 2009, citing satellite imagery as proof that “the NCRI-identified site at Parchin is a high explosives research and development and manufacturing site.”
• January 5, 2020: The regime announced the conclusion of its “fifth step” in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The process had ostensibly begun in response to the US withdrawal from that agreement in 2018, but it continued despite protests from European powers that are intent on upholding the agreement. Iran has remained in violation of all major provisions ever since, and the speed with which it resumed higher-than-permitted levels of uranium enrichment has raised additional questions about whether the regime had ever truly downgraded its nuclear infrastructure in the first place.
• August 26, 2020: The IAEA finally gained access to an IRGC-controlled site north of Abadeh on this date, approximately 17 years after the first known high-explosive tests were carried out there under the project name “Marivan.” In the interim, the site had become associated with METFAZ activities, and the NCRI had revealed details of clandestine, nuclear-related projects that took place there. As a result, the IRGC recognized the risk of broader exposure and endeavored to cover up evidence by razing the facilities in July 2019, continuing to stonewall international inquiries for another year.
• October 16, 2020: The NCRI issued a new report explaining that authorities in charge of nuclear weaponization had established an entirely new site in the Sorkheh-Hessar region of eastern The regime. The report specified that construction on the facility, in the midst of a ballistic missile manufacturing complex, began in 2012 and that it gradually became functional starting in 2017. As this timeline perfectly overlaps with the implementation of the JCPOA, it arguably corroborates the NCRI’s longstanding conclusion that the regime never intended to fully comply with the terms of that deal.
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