(Telegraph-UK) Damien McElroy - Western intelligence officials have said that the Iranian regime was moving its nuclear and ballistic assets to new locations to defend against foreign saboteurs and the threat of direct military action. Now Brig.-Gen. Gholam Reza Jalali, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has said new locations would be established to house the nuclear program. Separately, Western diplomats revealed that Iran was poised to launch production of enriched uranium, which can be refined to build a nuclear bomb, at an underground facility at Fordow near Qom. Shannon Kile, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said that secret facilities posed a far graver potential threat than Iran's existing plants. By producing enriched uranium underground, the regime could race to complete a nuclear warhead - a process known as breakout. "Obviously, for people who are concerned about Iran's ability to break out and to enrich to weapons-grade, this is a pretty good step along that route," he said.
2011-12-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive