AP, Paris, September 24, 2009 – An Iranian exile group in France on Thursday released satellite images and details about what it claims are two sites used to research and build nuclear weapons in Iran. The claims could not immediately be verified.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political arm of the Iranian Opposition People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, said the sites are evidence that Iran is continuing and expanding nuclear activity despite international demands to halt it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is investigating them. The Iranian Embassy in France would not comment.
The United States and its allies fear Iran is building nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists it is seeking only nuclear energy.
The Iranian exile group released material in 2002 that helped confirm a hidden Iranian uranium enrichment program and other covert activity that eventually led to three rounds of U.N. sanctions.
The People’s Mujahedeen is considered a terrorist group by the United States and Iran’s government. It led a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s and helped overthrow the U.S.-backed shah in 1979 but later fell out with Iran’s leadership.
At a Paris news conference, Mehdi Abrishamchi showed images of two sites and gave their precise locations.
The first was in eastern Tehran, where he said nuclear weapons research was being carried out by an Iranian agency Metfaz. He claimed that components of nuclear weapons are being manufactured at a second site, southeast of Tehran in the village Sanjarian, accessed by a metal bridge.