Britannia Radio

The Physics Research Center and Iran’s Parallel Military Nuclear Program

February 23, 2012

The Washington Post has published an article on the unanswered nuclear weaponization issues of the Iranian nuclear program. The summary below is part of a major ISIS report referenced by the Washington Post looking into the possibility of an Iranian military nuclear program parallel to the civilian one conducted by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The Physics Research Center and Iran’s Parallel Military Nuclear Program

A key issue for the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA) is whether Iran has a parallel military nuclear program that can provide nuclear weapons if the regime decides to build them. Understanding that issue depends critically on what Iran’s military nuclear entities have achieved already. Newly aquired information sheds light on one of Iran’s most important and least understood military nuclear organizations, the Physics Research Center, which operated in the 1990s and was later consolidated into successive military nuclear organizations. The new information also demonstrates the incompleteness and inadequacy of Iran’s declarations to the IAEA about its past and possibly on-going military nuclear efforts

By David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Andrea Stricker

Summary

Evidence obtained by the IAEA indicates that the Iranian revolutionary regime probably first made a decision to build nuclear weapons in the mid-to-late 1980s. According to information received by the IAEA and included in its November 2011 report, the Physics Research Center (PHRC) appears to have been created in 1989 as part of an effort to create an undeclared nuclear program, likely aimed at the development of a nuclear weapon. PHRC in turn may have evolved from a project at Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG) in the late 1980s that may have sought to research a nuclear warhead for a ballistic missile. In 2003, under intense international pressure, Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment programs. Based on the IAEA’s findings, Iran sought to keep its nuclear weaponization programs secret from the inspectors and took steps to better hide this program’s existence. The razing of the Lavisan Shian in 2004 site that formerly housed the PHRC was likely an attempt to prevent the IAEA from carrying out environmental sampling, a technique that had uncovered other secret Iranian nuclear activities in 2003.

Although Iran has admitted that the PHRC was related to the military and had a nuclear purpose in the area of defense preparedness and radiation detection, its actual nuclear role appears much more extensive. ISIS has accumulated from multiple sources a range of procurement information related to the PHRC. ISIS has obtained supplier companies’ information, a set of over 1,600 telexes between PHRC or Sharif University and overseas suppliers, and other information obtained from governments, IAEA reports, and the media. The information provides an extensive picture of PHRC’s wide-ranging procurement efforts in the early 1990s. Several experts retained by ISIS have assessed the information in the telexes. About 50 telexes referenced in the report’s text are found in a supplement.

The information and documents assembled by ISIS suggest that the PHRC had departments focused on a wide range of nuclear technology, including gas centrifuges and laser enrichment, radiation protection, uranium conversion, uranium exploration and possibly mining, and heavy water production. This finding supports the allegation that Iran’s Ministry of Defense was involved in many aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle and the research and development of nuclear weapons.

In the early 1990s, the Physics Research Center engaged in an extensive procurement effort that included using Sharif University of Technology and other entities to assist in outfitting a nuclear program. In many cases, Sharif University appears to have been used as a front for purchases made by PHRC. Some goods could have gone to Sharif University, but the bulk of the procurements appear destined for the PHRC or its sponsors. Sharif University also housed significant relevant expertise on nuclear technology, and there may have been cooperation between Sharif University and PHRC on undeclared nuclear activities that went beyond procurement.

Iran has failed to declare all of PHRC’s activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has stated to the IAEA that the PHRC procurements were not related to a nuclear program. The information assembled in this ISIS report, however, contradicts this claim. Iran has created a cover story for the PHRC involving Sharif University that attempts to hide its true activities, including a vast number of both successful and attempted procurements for ostensibly undeclared nuclear programs.

Whatever nuclear activities PHRC pursued in the early 1990s, they appear independent of those of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) in the area of gas centrifuges, uranium exploration and possibly mining, and uranium conversion. Iran should explain to the IAEA why there appears to have been a parallel, organized nuclear program.

The telexes, which mainly date to 1990-1993, do not reveal an extensive effort to research or develop nuclear weapons, commonly called nuclear weaponization. However, some procurements or attempted procurements appear aimed at equipment or technology that would be a prerequisite for such work.

What did the PHRC accomplish and was it closed in 1998, as Iran declared to the IAEA? The IAEA has suggested in its November 2011 report that PHRC instead was consolidated under the AMAD Plan. Where are the goods procured by the PHRC, and where are all the hundreds of engineers, scientists, and administrators who worked there?

Prior to Iran’s suspension of its centrifuge program in late 2003, military contractors at the 7th of Tir Facility made the most sensitive centrifuge components, namely the rotating ones, for the P1 centrifuges. In about 2001, the AEOI had ordered enough of these parts from 7th of Tir for 10,000 P1 centrifuges, slated for eventual installation at the then secret Natanz enrichment site, according to the IAEA. Perhaps, Iran’s Ministry of Defense originally intended to use this same manufacturing site and others to make 3,000 P1 centrifuges for a parallel military centrifuge plant that would use uranium hexafluoride produced by another project of this parallel effort. Many questions remain about the origin and purpose of the Gchine mine and the original intended function of the deeply buried Qom centrifuge plant discovered in 2009 by Western intelligence. Was the Qom site, now called the Fordow site, to be a military-controlled site dedicated to the production of weapon-grade uranium? With the end of the suspension in 2006, did the Ministry of Defense also resume its centrifuge plans as well and plan to install centrifuges at the Qom plant?

PHRC may have aimed to ensure that the military had a strong hand and competence in the nuclear fuel cycle and weaponization. Although the bulk of the nuclear fuel cycle competence would remain in the AEOI, the military would have gained enough to ensure that it could build a highly secretive parallel program aimed at obtaining both weapon-grade uranium and the weapon itself.

Despite all the new information, the PHRC remains difficult to fully understand. Iran should clarify PHRC’s exact purpose and accomplishments and its relationship to the IAEA’s broader question of the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear effort.

Read the full report at: The Physics Research Center and Iran’s Parallel Military Nuclear Program

The supplemental appendix of the telexes mentioned in the report can be found at: Appendix of PHRC telexes