A Trajectory of deception for Two Decades

By Saeed Abed

June 19, 2022

As the IAEA is heading for the next BoG meeting the 35 member states are to once more decide on three decades of denial, deception, and duplicity by the Iran regime.

Since the regime was caught in the act when the Iranian Resistance exposed its clandestine nuclear weapon’s program on August 14, 2002, the world had no excuse to turn a blind eye on the next global menace in waiting.

The NCRI continued to warn the world about Tehran’s deception tactics. On September 10, 2004, at a press conference in Paris, the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Mohammad Mohaddessin revealed information about a secret meeting at the highest levels of the regime, where Khamenei appointed a team run by Hassan Rouhani with the task of deceiving the international community and preventing disclosures until they achieve the necessary nuclear technology for a bomb.

On October 10, 2004, then president, Mohammad Khatami officially appointed Rouhani on this position and this capacity, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, Intelligence Minister Ali Younessi, Defense Minister Shamkhani, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran head Aghazadeh, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati (Khamenei’s personal representative) were working under his supervision. In addition, individuals such as Sayed Hossein Mousavian, Amir Hossein Zamani-nia, Mohammad Hossein Alborzi, Syrous Nasseri, Mohammad Kazem Sajadpour and Bozorgmehr Zaerian had the responsibility to prevent the disclosure of the regime’s nuclear activities in the international scene.

In the following years, the NCRI continuously disclosed detailed information about the regime’s deception. In a book titled ‘National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy’, former president Hassan Rouhani wrote: “Iran intended to present the world ‘with a fait accompli’, and run 54,000 centrifuges by March 2003, and produce 30 tons of 3.5 percent fuel annually. However, the MEK suddenly launched a press conference and exposed the sites of Natanz and Arak and made a lot of noise by making insubstantial allegations.”

In 2006, Rouhani admitted how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear program was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

On December 2, 2015, The NCRI disclosed the Iranian regime’s secret committee to deceive IAEA on the PMD Probe.

The NCRI revealed that a top-secret committee oversaw drafting the answers to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding the Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of Tehran’s nuclear program.

According to the revelations top officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) had been tasked with drafting the responses to IAEA’s PMD inquiries working to cover up the military dimensions, thus resolving and terminating the PMD dispute by forging suitable scenarios for non-military usage of the program, which would seem plausible to the IAEA, and to falsely convince the international community that Iran has never been after the nuclear bomb.

This committee prepared the PMD answers delivered to the IAEA on August 15, 2015.

Among the foremost issues related to the PMD question are the explosive detonators called EBW (Exploding Bridge Wire) detonator, an integral part of a program to develop an implosion type nuclear device.

In its September 2014 report, IAEA had stated that Iran had offered “information and explanations to the Agency on Iran’s work after 2007 related to the application of EBW detonators in the oil and gas industry which was not inconsistent with specialized industry practices.”

Tehran had forged documents and exchanged communication between the Oil Ministry and the Defense Ministry to prove that the EBWs were produced and used by the oil industry.

But according to the Iranian Resistance, the National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC), responsible for all oil and gas drilling, had not received even one of EBW detonators that had been produced by the Ministry of Defense!

“During those years, a good portion of time, we wanted to disrupt our adversaries’ assessment,” Bagheri Kani told Ofogh TV in 2019. “To make this happen, we needed more time. We had to show our capabilities in practice so they could see them. The 20% enrichment couldn’t be done overnight. It required some work. Fordow and Arak [nuclear sites] needed some work. So, this required some time to achieve. Therefore, we bought some time. But when they were ready to negotiate a deal, the negotiation process expedited.”

In an interview with the state-run TV channel 4 on January 2019, Ali Akbar Salehi, former head of the Iranian regime’s Atomic Energy Organization acknowledged that he had lied about the Arak site and had hidden, upon Khamenei’s order, some of the prohibited equipment they had bought.

According to the official IRNA news agency on February 9, 2019, Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, admitted in a speech in Mashhad: “We have the formula for building an atomic bomb” and “we consider nuclear energy to be vital to us.”

On 3 November 2019, Ali Akbar Salehi also admitted the regime’s deception during the negotiations.

On February 9, 2021, in a TV interview that was mostly read from a text, Mahmoud Alavi, the regime’s former Minister of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) said the regime might decide to produce the nuclear bomb.

On Saturday, November 27, 2021, Fereydoun Abbasi, the former head of the regime’s Atomic Energy Organization, confessed in an interview with a state-run daily, “Iran,” that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the assassinated former head of the regime’s nuclear weapons project, had created a system to produce a nuclear bomb.

A former deputy speaker of the regime’s parliament (Majlis), Ali Mottahari made a startling revelation in his interview with Iscanews on April 24, 2022, confirming that the country was actually trying to make the bomb.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI President-elect, told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2015: “Khamenei’s fatwa on the prohibition of nuclear weapons is a deception. Years ago, former Supreme Leader Khomeini instructed Khamenei that, in the interests of the regime, the Supreme Leader can unilaterally cancel the Sharia contracts he has concluded with the people.”

As the IAEA is heading for the next BoG meeting the 35 member states are to once more decide on three decades of denial, deception, and duplicity by the mullahs’ regime.

Meanwhile the only way to stop the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons projects is to reactivate the six UN Security Council resolutions, dismantle the regime’s nuclear sites and enrichment activity altogether, and conduct anytime, anywhere inspections.

Saeed Abed is a Member of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee, Human Rights Activist, Expert on Iran, and the Middle East