RadioFreeEurope, RadioLiberty – An exiled Iranian opposition group claims Tehran has already built 15 P-2 centrifuges and could have hundreds more ready next year.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says the advanced technology could help Iran dramatically speed up uranium enrichment and eventually lead to atomic-bomb material.
The chairman of NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Mohammad Mohadessin, told a news conference in Paris today that his group has located what it believes is a secret production site for P-2 centrifuges near Tehran.
Mohaddessin further claims blueprints for the P-2 centrifuges were provided to Iran in 1995 by a black-market network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, then Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist.
NCRI, which is widely believed to be a front group for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People’s Mujahedin) of Iran, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
In August 2002, the group was among the first to alert the world of Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities.
