An international team of nuclear experts has just identified a new previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear weapons site. They are calling on Tehran to admit the existence of the newly identified site to international inspectors.
The (ISIS) reveal Wednesday that it has uncovered evidence that Iran operated a nuclear weapons construction facility in norther Iran until at least 2011. The experts believe that the facility was destroyed as Western nations began a detailed investigation of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Information about the nuclear weapons facility was discovered in a batch of records that were recently smuggled out of Iran by the Israelis.
Iran is required by international law to declare all of its former nuclear weapons sites to international inspectors. However, Iran has never declared the new site identified by the international team of nuclear experts at ISIS. According to the ISIS team, “The facility was intended as a pilot plant, aimed at developing and making uranium components for nuclear weapons, in particular components from weapon-grade uranium, the key nuclear explosive material in Iranian nuclear weapon cores. The key building of the site, the uranium metals workshop, was apparently gutted and abandoned between late 2010 and early 2011."
It is believed that Iran destroyed the newly identified site after the international community discovered the existence of the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant in 2009. Fordow was a military bunker tunneled into the side of a mountain. It contained a great deal of Iran’s nuclear weapons program infrastructure.
David Albright is the president and founder of ISIS. He has called on Iran to explain the existence of this nuclear weapons facility site to the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said, "Iran should declare this site to the International Atomic Energy Agency and allow its inspection, since the facility was designed and built to handle nuclear material subject to safeguards under Iran's comprehensive safeguards agreement. The IAEA, more generally, should verify sites, locations, facilities, documentation, equipment, and materials involved in the Amad Plan activities, and urge Iran to cooperate fully in these investigations, despite their age, as part of ensuring that Iran has not continued nuclear weapons work up to today."
Albright said in an interview that the existence of the site had not been made public before Wednesday and that it is unlikely that Western nations knew about it prior to the theft of the nuclear documents by Israel. He added, “This site may have been close to being able to make weapon-grade uranium cores for nuclear weapons, albeit no evidence Iran had any weapon-grade uranium yet. But the site highlights concretely that Iran was putting in place a nuclear weapons production industry, not just a development program, and there is no evidence of its destruction.” This revelation and other evidence reviewed by the experts strongly suggests that Iran has not fully ended its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It may just be biding its time while it is under intense surveillance by Western nations.
Andrea Stricker is a non-proliferation expert and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She said that the discovery of this new Iranian site “shows the extent to which Tehran lied to international inspectors about its past and possibly ongoing nuclear weapons program. It is possible that the site provided information that Iran could be using for nuclear weapons research today.”
“It could have been used to make actual nuclear weapon cores until a larger, planned facility called Shahid Boroujerdi was brought online. What's more, there is no guarantee that these uranium metallurgy activities stopped, since the archive information shows intentions to move and hide military nuclear activities after 2003. Today, Tehran is closer to a nuclear weapon than previously thought. The IAEA needs to undertake a full investigation in Iran to ensure that its nuclear program is strictly peaceful.”