Exile tells of secret nuclear site in Iran U.S. can't confirm claim on uranium for weapons

By JONATHAN S. LANDAY

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Iran has built a secret underground facility inside a tightly
guarded military complex to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, an Iranian
exile said Thursday.

The allegation, which couldn't immediately be confirmed, was leveled by
Alireza Jafarzadeh, an exile whose previous claims helped reveal that Iran
has been conducting clandestine nuclear activities for about 20 years.

Iran doesn't have diplomatic relations with the United States, and the
Iranian mission to the United Nations didn't return two telephone calls
seeking a response to Jafarzadeh's latest allegation.

Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program is for electricity production
and has denied U.S. allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear
weapons. A U.S. official said the claim could not be substantiated “at this
point.”

U.S. intelligence officials, who were burned by bogus intelligence provided
by Iraqi exiles trying to oust Saddam Hussein, have been more skeptical
about information provided by Jafarzadeh and other Iranian exiles. Some of
what they have provided, especially about Iran's nuclear programs, has
proved valuable, but other allegations remain unconfirmed or have proved
false, said one official.

Jafarzadeh, who runs a Washington-based consulting business, was the U.S.
spokesman for the National Coalition of Resistance of Iran until 2003, when
it was placed on the State Department's list of international terrorist
groups.

The coalition's military wing, the Mujahedeen Khalq, was based in Iraq and
armed by Hussein. It allegedly uses assassinations and other violence
against Iran's Islamic rulers.

Jafarzadeh said in a telephone interview that the secret underground uranium
enrichment facility is in Plan One, a southern sector of the huge Parchin
military complex, which produces chemicals 20 miles southeast of Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna, Austria-based U.N.
nuclear watchdog group investigating Iran's nuclear program, declined to
comment on Jafarzadeh's latest charge.

But Corey Hilderstein of the Institute for Science and International
Security, a Washington policy institute that tracks nuclear proliferation,
said commercial satellite photos last August showed tunneling activity at
Parchin.

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