Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convening an emergency
meeting Monday of his cabinet and others from the Supreme National
Security Council over WND’s revelation of the Islamic regime’s secret
nuclear facility.
The exclusive WND report on Jan. 7 said the secret facility is in Khondab near the city of Arak in central Iran.
DigitalGlobe Sept. 2012 - Khondab secret nuclear facility
According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit
with access to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is scrambling to find out
who leaked the information. The regime is concerned about international
ramifications of yet another secret site being exposed amid pressure and
sanctions by the West and the International Atomic Energy Agency ‘s
request for inspection and clarification over illicit nuclear
activities. The source is the same person who revealed the site’s
existence.
The regime has twice been caught red-handed with its covert nuclear
activity – in 2002 when its Natanz enrichment facility was exposed and
in 2009 with the exposure of the Fordo underground nuclear facility near
the city of Qom.
Upon the revelation of the Khondab site on WND, Ahmadinejad issued
two directives, according to the source – one to Heydar Moslehi, the
head of the Ministry of Intelligence, and another to Fereydoon
Abbasi-Davani, the head of the regime’s Atomic Energy Organization –
requesting immediate investigation into the leak.
The source added that the Intelligence Ministry, which oversees the
activity of all employees in the Iranian nuclear program, has begun
questioning workers in Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization through its
Herasat, an internal security force.
The regime fully knows, the source said, that any revelation of its
secret nuclear activity under current circumstances will destroy its
claim of peaceful nuclear activity and will embolden Israel’s position
internationally that the regime is lying about its activity and that it
needs to be confronted immediately.
According to the source, the Khondab facility houses over 2,000
centrifuges that are enriching uranium for Iran’s nuclear bomb program.
More cascades of centrifuges are being made operational to add to its
capacity.
DigitalGlobe images of the site have been given to organizations that
specialize in Iran’s illicit nuclear program for further analysis.
However, a retired imagery analyst who cannot be named has looked at two
of the images and confirms that the imagery shows “a large surface
installation showing characteristics of supporting a co-located
underground facility.”
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA analyst and executive director of
the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board to
Congress, said, “The imagery clearly shows some kind of highly sensitive
and fortified installation supporting a deep underground facility
inside the mountain.”
DigitalGlobe Sept. 2012 - Entrances to the underground facility
The Atomic Energy Organization’s Abbasi-Davani, in a memorial
ceremony on Jan. 10 for the assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist
Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, said the regime continues to enrich uranium to
the 20-percent level at both Natanz and Fordo. The 20-percent enriched
stock could within weeks be further enriched to weaponization grade.
“We will not accept anything beyond the (Non-proliferation Treaty)
framework,” Abbasi-Davani said. “We will not answer undocumented claims.
We will (only) respond to the documents we get from them that we find
acceptable.”
The IAEA, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has for months
requested access to Iran’s Parchin military site, where it is believed
that tests took place on the trigger for an atomic bomb. Regime
officials have so far refused, even as satellite images show that Iran
has for months started cleaning up the test site.
The latest IAEA report last November
stated that the regime has expanded its enrichment program, with over
10,000 centrifuges enriching uranium at Natanz and over 2,700
centrifuges at Fordo.
Though Iran is under severe sanctions by the United Nations, United
States and the European Union for its illicit nuclear program, it
currently has enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs if further
enriched and is working with North Korea on its intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, WND’s source said Syria has started shipping uranium from
Syria to Iran. And according to a Reuters report, Western and Israeli
security experts indicate that Syria may have as much as 50 tons of
unenriched uranium.
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*Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray”
(Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National
and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for
Democracy in Iran (FDI).
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