Iran is developing nuclear missiles with a range of 3,000km based on designs handed to the Islamic regime by North Korea, The Telegraph can disclose.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which has previously exposed details of Tehran’s secret uranium enrichment facilities, has shared information on how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are expanding their weapons programmes.
The exiled opposition group says that two sites camouflaged as communication satellite launch facilities have been used to rush the production of nuclear warheads.
They are both under the control of the Organisation for Advanced Defence Research (SPND), the regime’s nuclear weapons arm.
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“The Iranian mullahs are masters of lies, deception and evasion. For over two decades, they have used negotiations and the West’s leniency as a means to advance their nuclear weapons programme, threatening global peace and stability,” Soona Samsami, a US representative of the NCRI, told The Telegraph.
“Tehran has never been as weak and vulnerable as it is today. The desperate Iranian regime is thus speeding up the development of nuclear weapons.
“Now is the time to hold the regime accountable for internal killings, regional warmongering, and nuclear weapons development,” she added.
At the first site, known as the Shahrud missile site, about 35km from a city of the same name, SPND and IRGC Aerospace Force experts have been working on producing a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted to a Ghaem-100, solid-fuelled rocket with a range of 3,000km.
Missiles with that range would allow Iran to launch nuclear strikes deep into Europe from its territory – as far as the likes Greece, and regional targets such Israel, Tehran’s arch enemy.
There have been at least three successful launches of the rocket, which the NCRI says “enhances the regime’s capability to deploy nuclear weapons”.
The IRGC has also announced plans to test more advanced Ghaem-105 rockets in the coming months.
Previous tests at the site were conducted as satellite launches as the rockets were described as “satellite carriers” to conceal the regime’s alleged nuclear missile programme, the NCRI says.
Satellite images show a large concrete platform from which mobile launch vehicles can fire the rockets skywards.
Nearby, there are clusters of buildings where the research is believed to be used for research purposes.
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A second site, situated around 70km southeast of the city of Semnan, is being used to develop Simorgh missiles, a weapon based on North Korean designs.
The designs are similar to the North Korean UNHA-1, an 18-metre tall rocket, which Pyongyang says is an expendable rocket for carrying equipment into space.
Significant portions of the site are based underground to conceal the work from intelligence satellites capturing images of the area.
To further obscure the military purpose of the Semnan missile site, the regime named it the Imam Khomeini site after Iran’s space organisation and carried out ballistic missile launches under the guise of satellite launches.
The regime has been steadily expanding the site since around 2005, with six new structures emerging on satellite imagery over the past decade.
Images shared by the NCRI show a large section of ground in the northeastern corner of the Semnan site being excavated in 2009. As progress continues, concrete foundations are seen being erected in the hole.
Images from 2012 of the same section of the base show the structure entirely covered with dirt.
According to the NCRI, activities by the SPND, including its geophysics department, which specialises in monitoring underground explosions from nuclear warhead productions, have intensified.
Journalists were once permitted to visit the site, where they witnessed IRGC soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, but had their photographs confiscated by regime enforcers, with only a handful of selected images released.
Both sites have been designated military facilities and follow strict security protocols to avoid unwanted guests discovering what work is being undertaken at them.
Workers at the sites arrive at an external perimeter gate, often dozens of kilometres from the main facilities, in their private cars from Tehran and other cities.
From the checkpoint, the employees are brought in by bus by the IRGC to ensure maximum security.
