Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Mehdi Abrshamchi

Debka:

The latest round of the international campaign against Iran’s covert nuclear activities is coming out of Paris, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report. A statement by President Nicolas Sarkozy Thursday, Sept. 27 that he does not believe Iran’s program is peaceful was followed by a press conference at which the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s chairman, Mehdi Abrishamchi, reported Iran was constructing a new site for a secret military project 5 km south of the Natanz nuclear complex.

Sarkozy’s spokesman David Martinon said: “Ahmadinejad claims his country’s nuclear activities are peaceful. Ultimately, we do not believe him. Everyone knows that the program has military goals. We have a string of clues leading us to that conclusion. The question is not settled.”
DEBKAfile notes that, five years ago, the Americans used the same roundabout technique for making their first disclosures of Iran’s nuclear violations.
They fed the revelation that uranium enrichment was taking place at Natanz to the same resistance group, NCRI (Mujahideen Qalq), which then called a press conference in Washington and laid it before the public.

Surprisingly, this time, Tehran made its own contribution to the disclosures. The local newspaper Kayhan stated on Sept. 25: “The intelligence that the West currently has on Iran’s nuclear program is limited to sites accessible to IAEA inspectors – and more than that they do not know.”

Two days later, the NCRI went before the press in Paris with the little information he had, which nonetheless substantiated Tehran’s admission.

Iran is apparently bracing for a fresh spate of international allegations and disclosures from intelligence sources about its most secret nuclear activities for military purposes.

Abrishamchi’s seeming first installment did not specify what was going on at the new site or the nature of its contribution to Iran’s weapons program.

He located it near the small village of Abbas-Abad 5 km south of Natanz in the Siah mountain. The site, he said, consisted of a sprawling underground area with two tunnels which run under two mountains connected to Natanz. The tunnel entrance is six meters wide. Building began in 2006 and is scheduled to end in March 2008. Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Tabatabi monitors progress of the work every week; it is overseen by his deputy Brig. Gen. Daneshjo.

To preserve the project’s secrecy, the NCRI chairman reported, its various sections were assigned to different agencies and units of the defense ministry and Revolutionary Guards, none of which has the whole picture.

DEBKAfile’s sources believe that just enough data were rationed out to Abrishamchi to let the Iranians know that US and French intelligence has a lot more. How much more is released will depend on Tehran’s reaction. If the clerical rulers continue to maintain like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that their program is purely for peaceful purposes and the issue is closed, more solid information on Iranian illicit undertakings is likely to be laid bare.

MEMRI:

September 27, 2007 No.1727

Iranian Daily: ‘The Intelligence That the West Currently Has on Iran’s Nuclear Program is Limited to the Sites Accessible to IAEA Inspectors – And More Than That They Do Not Know’

Against the backdrop of the increasing threat of a possible attack on Iran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Ali J’afari warned the countries in the region against permitting the U.S. to attack Iran from its territory, saying “We will pay you back, and this is only natural.” [1]

In addition, the conservative Iranian daily Kayhan, which is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, hinted that Iran had not yet revealed all its nuclear facilities, and maintained that the West does not have all the intelligence information that it needs to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

The following are the highlights of the Kayhan article: [2]

“Is a new war on the way?… It seems that there is a need to precisely clarify, once and for all, why [the U.S.] cannot launch a war on Iran… All the questions and intelligence ambiguities that are facing the U.S…. make any discussion of [the U.S.’s] preparedness for an attack on Iran a joke, at best.

“The important questions are: How wide is the gap between the exact point to which Iran’s nuclear program has progressed and what the Americans perceive to be the point of no return[?]… The intelligence that the West currently has on Iran’s nuclear program is limited to the sites accessible to IAEA inspectors, and more than that they do not know… Is the [total] number of Iran’s nuclear facilities [really] limited to those facilities that have been reported - so that America can be certain that by destroying them it will destroy Iran’s entire nuclear program, or at least set it back for a very long time?…

“Iran declares that it will consider to be an enemy any country that places its territory at the disposal of the Americans so that they can attack [Iran]… Iran’s strategic facilities are scattered across the breadth of Iran, and are completely camouflaged… ”