Iran Hides Two Big Nuclear Facilities – Subcontracts for North Korea

Debka ^ | 12/13/2002 | Debka Staffers

[yatros from flatwater]

DEBKAfile - We start where the media stop

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Iran Hides Two Big Nuclear Facilities – Subcontracts for North Korea

As first revealed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 85, Nov. 15, 2002

December 13, 2002, 8:18 AM (GMT+02:00)

	Satellite photo of secret Iranian nuclear installation at Natanz

On October 25, 2002, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported in its No. 82 issue the suspicion in Washington that one of the two bombs allegedly hidden in Kim Jong II’s war chest was not North Korean at all, but Iranian. Our sources revealed that the Iranian bomb was delivered to North Korea in the third week of September under a secret agreement Kim-Jung Nan, the North Korean president’s overseer of his country’s military and nuclear relations, concluded in Tehran on July 24. (To subcribe to DNW, click HERE ).

Last week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly received fresh and surprising information on how this deal is being implemented. The information came from intelligence sources who checked out a detailed report on Iran’s clandestine nuclear program brought to Washington in early August by an Iranian exile in flight from the hard-line regime. That report found no willing listeners in the US government, which was busy at the time with its bid to rope Iran into the war against Iraq.

On August 14, the exile called a select news conference and presented his report again. He still failed to attract serious official attention – until the North Koreans admitted to a secret nuclear program. Then, the powers that be in Washington began connecting nuclear dots. Intelligence agencies went to work and established that the Iranian exile’s report, gathering dust for three months, was spot on target, accurate in every detail.

That report reveals that the two bombs smuggled to North Korea from Iran last September were the property of North Korea. However, they were manufactured and assembled in Iran under the secret Tehran-Pyongyang contract of last July.

This means that North Korea secretly transferred its nuclear manufacturing facilities to the Islamic Republic. Specifically, North Korean plant for the production of all the essential components of the North Korean bombs, including equipment for uranium enrichment, was shifted lock, stock and barrel to Iran, where production has been taking place at two secret sites, both supervised by the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization. This state body is controlled by the National Security Council that defers only to Iran’s radical spiritual leader Ali Khamenei.

The most important site, where nuclear fuel (enriched uranium) is produced, is located at Natanz, 100 miles north of Isfahan on the old Natanz-Kashan highway. A huge facility, big enough to employ hundreds of workers, it is buried many feet underground and set in layers of concrete. The director of this site is an IAEO official called Dawood Agha-Jani.

The second site, producing heavy water, is at Arak in a place called Qatran Workshop close to the Qara-Chai River, three miles from Khondab in northern Azerbaijan. A second IAEO official, Daryoush Sheibani, heads this project.

Unfinished structures were left at both locations to support official claims that building is uncompleted and the sites still inactive

The Iranian exile’s report, as relayed to DEBKA-Net-Weekly , stressed that Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians were actively employed in every stage of production, their participation in the project in its entirety the essence of the secret Iranian-North Korean nuclear cooperation pact.

Intelligence experts are still pondering the following missing information:

--- After the two bombs were completed, did North Korea leave its nuclear equipment and manufacturing facilities behind in Iran?

Our sources suggest it did - which means Iran is now equipped to manufacture bombs unaided, whether by Russia or anyone else - depending, of course, on the Iranian scientists having acquired the necessary proficiency to work independently.

--- How much uranium was enriched? And what proportion, if any, stayed in Iran?

The presumption is that Iran was left with enough to make between 8-12 bombs.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources add that the Bush administration is considering placing this information before Russian president Vladimir Putin as leverage to persuade him to come aboard, should the US decide on military action against Iran, during or after the Iraq campaign.

After all, it would now appear that the Iranians used the Russian-assisted Bushehr project as a cover-up for their secret deal with North Korea, camouflage to obscure their progress towards a nuke of their own.

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Copyright 2002 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

[yatros from flatwater]

Consistent with this earlier article and recent events, isn't it? (Posted by tailgunner joe on 10/23/02 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/774079/posts)

[Registered]

Ruh Roh!

[My2Cents]

As was pointed out on Fox News Channel last night, we had reports yesterday of VX nerve gas from Iraq being provided to al Qaeda, and two nuclear facilities in Iran with connections to North Korea. Most didn't understand the connection of Bush's statement last year that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea form an "Axis of Evil." Now the picture is clearer.

[hchutch]

No kidding...

[F16Fighter]

Maybe we could formally announce (through the UN of course) that the US will be ordering an "inspection" in the year 2005. As usual, inspectors with 200/500 vision, with IQs of less then 70 will be the only criteria for such inspectors...

[AmericanInTokyo]

Well, add Syria to that damned 'axis'.

Syria, clandestinely has a contract manufacturing operation with North Korea, in North Korea, to manufacture WMD for the Syrians. In fact the recent scuds may in fact have been bound for Syria and not Yemen.

GBU bunker busters able to smack the hell out of these nuclear facilities north of Pyeongyang in North Korea. It may come to that. We may need an East Asian version of an "Osiris Raid."

[My2Cents]

I agree with you. After we take out Saddam, then push the Iranian regime out the door, and topple North Korea, it's on to Damascus (followed by Rihad).

[b4its2late]

Axis of Evil doesn't sound so far fetched after all.......

[martian_22]

The 'Mother of all wars" wants to give birth.

Can't say I like the looks of the offspring....

[Darksheare]

GBU won't bust through all that concrete. That's supposed to stop a nuke. Those buildings are built off of Russian plans for a Command and Control center that's supposed to survive an almost direct hit.
We'll need something bigger, or target stuff like: coolant ponds and exposed control equipment.

[AmericanInTokyo]

I believe multiple repeated GBU visits may well do it. Something of a tactical nuke nature minus the radiation nastiness of a nuke, such as Fuel Air if penetrable?

[Darksheare]

We buy a few of the 5000 pound FAE's off of the Russians. That would wreck stuff topside enough to screw with reactor operations. Then we send in something nasty like a penetrating FAE.. not that it'll damage much because the fuel has to mix with air to make it work, and inside a building it won't. Unless it's mixed with an oxidiser agent...

[Ranger]

I'm talking out of school, but wonder if EMP weapon of some sort could cook the electronics buried underground. I'd think electronics would be both vulnerable and critical to a successful nuke program, buried or not.

[Darksheare]

Since the reactor buildings are designed off of Russian plans for a Command and Control Center, an EMP would have little effect. Only the exposed electronic equipment outside would be cooked. That's why the coolant ponds and other exposed equipment needs to be toasted.

If an EMP could be put inside the building, however..