Dissidents: Iranian authorities built a secret nuclear facility

The dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has "reliable information about a new and top-secret site intended for a nuclear project."

The movement states that they got this information through the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), which is close to them.

NCRI advocates the end of Muslim clerical rule in Iran, and the movement is the political wing of the PMOI, which sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq conflict in the XNUMXs.

The NCRI states that the location of the secret facility is a tunnel complex under the mountains ten kilometers east of Damavand, which is located about fifty kilometers northeast of Tehran. The first phase of construction of the nuclear project reportedly began in 2006, and was recently completed.

Although the organization released satellite images of the alleged secret hideout, those images cannot be taken as irrefutable evidence that it is a nuclear facility, reports Reuters.

The spokesperson of NCRI said that he cannot say with certainty what will be produced there, but that the companies and people who participated in its construction have confirmed that it is a nuclear plant. The dissident group has published the names of the officials it claims are in charge of the project.

"The facility consists of four tunnels and was built by a group of engineering and construction companies affiliated with the defense ministry and Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards," NCRI said.

"The two tunnels are about 550 meters long and there are a total of six huge halls in them," the statement added.

In 2002, NCRI revealed the existence of a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a nuclear reactor at Arak that uses heavy water, and the construction of ten new uranium enrichment facilities in Iran was announced as early as 2009.

However, analysts say that the NCRI's track record has been mixed and that it has political goals.

In 2010, the NCRI published evidence of a new nuclear facility west of Tehran, and that's when US officials spoke up, saying that they had known about the facility for years, but that it was not nuclear.

Iran rejected the claims and accusations of the US and Israel that the purpose of launching these strikes was the production of a nuclear bomb, and called its nuclear program peaceful.

Enriched uranium can be used to obtain fuel for nuclear power plants, which the Iranian authorities list as their priority, but many Western countries still believe that official Tehran's ultimate goal is to build an atomic bomb.