Iran has new nuclear site: Exiled group

ROWHANI ROLE A Paris-based group alleges site has existed since 2006 and new prez had a “key role” in programme

PARIS: An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed on Thursday to have evidence of a hidden nuclear site located in tunnels beneath a mountain near the town of Damavand, 70 kilometres northeast of Tehran.

The Paris-based militant group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), alleges the site has existed since 2006 with the first series of subterranean tunnels and four external depots recently completed.

The group also claims the recently elected president Hassan Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator, had a “key role” in the programme.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remained non-committal about the MEK’s claims.

“The Agency will assess the information that has been provided, as we do with any new information we receive,” spokeswoman Gill Tudor told AFP.

Founded in the 1960s to oppose the rule of the Shah, the MEK was considered a terrorist organisation by the United States until last year, and has provided information about the Iranian nuclear programme on several occasions.

“The organisation of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) has discovered credible evidence of a secret new nuclear site, gathered over a year by 50 sources in various parts of the regime,” said a statement from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the umbrella group of which MEK is a part.

“The codename of the project is ‘Ma’adane-e Charq’ (literally ‘the mine of the east’) or ‘Project Kossar’”.