Fox News Live

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Do Satellite Photos Prove Iran is Creating Nuke Weapons?

David Asman: International inspectors are reportedly trying to gain access to two secret Iranian military sites. This after these satellite photos and other intelligence indicate that the country may be trying to develop a nuclear arms. Well that’s a surprise. Mean time the Iranian opposition now says Iran is manufacturing an advanced missile named Ghadar with a range nearly twice as far as the Shahab-3 missile. With us here to talk about this now is FOX News Foreign Affairs Analyst Alireza Jafarzedeh. Alireza great to see you, now we should mention that…

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Great to see you, David.

David Asman: Now, we should mention that you and your organization were instrumental in coming up with a lot of this documentation, right?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Exactly, actually in August of 2002, Iran’s main opposition, the National Council of Resistance revealed the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak, and today they released it in Europe that Iran is actually, as you said, is building a missile with a farther range, perhaps twice as much as the Shahab-3 that can now reach European capitals. And they now have a site that they can deploy it. What you’re looking at right now, are the satellite images of Imam Ali Barracks, which is in Khorramabad near the Iraqi boarder. It’s hidden in the mountains. It’s an old barracks dating back to the time of the Shah, but they have now converted this into a missile launch that they can hide the missile and within a half hour they can make the missile ready to deploy and to fire.

David Asman: What are we looking at now, Alireza?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Now the site that you are looking at is the Hemmat Missile Industries near Tehran, north east Tehran. This is where they are actually building both the Shahab missiles --that they were building here before-- but now the more advanced Ghadar missile is now being built here.

David Asman: Now Alireza, before you go any further as we continue to look at these pictures and the experts I guess have verified that this equipment is related to nuclear research, or missile research but why is it that you folks seem to be one step ahead of where the International Atomic Energy Agency is in terms of discovering these things.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Well, I think it’s because the Iranian opposition has access to information directly within Iran, to sources within the Iranian regime and this is something that nobody else has.

David Asman: Right, but Alireza what I’m asking is, are they willing, is the IAEA an international organization willing to cut the Iranian government more slack than they should?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: That’s exactly what I wanted to get to. Because of the track record of the Iranian opposition, I think what the IAEA need to do…They need to be very firm and try to act very quickly in trying to inspect the places. Now, under the present agreement that the IAEA has made with Iran they can only inspect the sites that are already declared as nuclear related sites by Iran, but don’t forget, none of those sites were revealed by Iran to begin with. So we have this dilemma here.

David Asman: And correct me if I’m wrong. I heard that Natanz which is one area where there is apparently a lot of nuclear research going on, the IAEA inspectors never even went to some of these sites, is that correct?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Well, I don’t know about that. I know at least some parts of Natanz they have inspected. But the problem is this. Iran is having a parallel nuclear weapons program run by the military in addition to their supposedly benign program and the IAEA can only monitor what the supposedly benign part, the nuclear energy part is doing but they have no way of controlling and monitoring what the military part is doing and this is based on the agreement they have made. The recent resolution that was passed in Europe at the IAEA meeting says that the IAEA can only go to those sites that were declared. The US wanted to have a clause, a sentence, in the resolution that would allow the IAEA to go in and the Europeans rejected that.

David Asman: Now a UN official was speaking to the New York Times today and he said, Moammar Gadhafi had a nuclear bomb project. The only reason we found out about it was because he got scared after we went into Iraq. Bottom line is, no matter how good or well meaning the IAEA inspectors are, bottom line is we won’t know exactly what the Iranians are doing regarding nuclear research unless they tell us, right?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: That’s exactly the case.

David Asman: And they are not going to tell us unless they feel threatened to tell us.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: And they would never tell anybody, exactly. And I think this is the key thing. I think we get to the policy part of it. The US policy must shift into a policy of firmness, decisiveness, a policy that would really threaten the very existence of the Ayatollahs. if they continue their program. And obviously the way to do it is not necessarily by sending planes or troops but rather reaching out to the very same opposition that is actually making such revelations. This is the kind of signal the US needs to send to Tehran and also to the Iranian people.

David Asman: Well they certainly don’t seem to be threatened by the IAEA at least at this point anyway.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Absolutely not.

David Asman: Alireza, great to see you. Thanks for coming in.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Thank you very much David, as always.

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