"Group Says Iran Has Secret Nuclear Program," the NYT reports:

An Iranian opposition group says it has new evidence that Iran is producing enriched uranium at a covert Defense Ministry facility in Tehran that has not been disclosed to United Nations inspectors.

The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, is planning to announce its finding in Paris on Wednesday. The group says that inspection of the site would demonstrate that Iran is secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons even while promising to freeze a critical part of its declared nuclear program, which it maintains is intended purely for civilian purposes.

A senior official of the group, Muhammad Mohaddessin, said in a telephone interview late on Tuesday that the group had shared the new information "very recently'' with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But he and other officials of the group said it had not discussed the matter with the United States government, and its claims could not be verified.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not return messages seeking comment on the assertion.

The group, based in Paris, is the political arm of the People's Mujahedeen, which is listed by the United States government as a terrorist organization because of its involvement in attacks on Americans in the 1970's. But the group also has a successful track record in gathering intelligence on Iran, and was the first, in 2002, to disclose the existence of what was then the secret Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.

United Nations inspectors "should not be fooled or deceived by the Iranian regime,'' Mr. Mohaddessin said.

A spokesman in Washington for the National Council for Resistance in Iran provided a seven-page summary of the assertion to The New York Times.

It says that the previously undisclosed site, in northeastern Tehran, covers 60 acres and houses biological and chemical warfare projects as well as nuclear activity. It says that the site, known as the Modern Defensive Readiness and Technology Center, now houses operations previously carried out at another Defense Ministry site in Tehran that was destroyed by the Iranian government this year before international inspectors could visit it.

This is all so familiar, isn't it? But where the INC was lying, the NCRI [the political arm of the People's Mujaheden/Mujahedeen-e-Khalq/MEK] could be telling the truth -- or not. More background here and here.

Update: Kevin Drum echoes the sense that this seems like Groundhog Day. But the IAEA says the NCRI's Iran nuclear intel has been spot-on -- unlike the INC's garbage.

Posted by Laura at November 16, 2004 10:21 PM