Iran working on P-2 centrifuges for nukes – opposition

Iran Focus: Paris, Apr. 27 – Iran’s main opposition movement National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) charged on Thursday that Tehran was working to develop P-2 centrifuges in an effort to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran Focus

Paris, Apr. 27 – Iran’s main opposition movement National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) charged on Thursday that Tehran was working to develop P-2 centrifuges in an effort to obtain nuclear weapons.

“The mullahs are hard at work trying to build P-2 centrifuges. Tests are already in process in this respect”, NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee chair Mohammad Mohaddessin told reporters at a press conference in Paris.

Mohaddessin said that with P-2 centrifuges, Tehran could speed up its “efforts to manufacture a nuclear bomb” four-fold.

“The regime has done its utmost to conceal the P-2 program and is trying to prevent the [International Atomic Energy Agency”> from obtaining any information on its P-2 research and development work. For this reason, all of the work has been carried out in military sites and by constant relocating of the work”, he said, adding that presently work on P-2 centrifuge development was being carried out in nuclear workshops in Ab-Ali, northern Tehran, and Natanz, central Iran. He said that the information had been provided to the opposition movement by sources inside Iran.

The Ministry of Defence was also working on the P-2 research program, he said, identifying “Ali Karimi, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps” as a defence ministry expert involved in the project.

Mohaddessin gave the names of several other nuclear officials involved in the P-2 projects, including Seyyed Jaber Safdari, a key official working in Natanz.

The NCRI foreign affairs chief also gave details of an “implosion-triggered” nuclear bomb project being pursued by Tehran.

He said that the defence ministry had attempted to buy 20 kilograms of beryllium needed to build the bomb.

The exile coalition NCRI was the first to reveal Iran’s clandestine nuclear program. In August 2002, they revealed two massive nuclear sites at Natanz and Arak, both in central Iran, and have since made a string of stunning revelations about Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.