DINSLAKEN, Germany (The Washington Post)— For years, mystery surrounded an Iranian-controlled factory tucked away in this town of 70,000 in Germany’s industrial west.
The plant manufactured high-pressure gas tanks, but its managers seemed uninterested in making a profit. Potential investors were turned away. An expensive piece of machinery — precise enough to produce components for centrifuges and missiles — sat idle after a failed attempt to ship it to Iran. Finally, the factory, MCS Technologies, closed its doors late last month.
Since then, the mystery has taken another turn. European security officials and former workers have raised questions about whether the high-tech equipment and material at MCS could have been part of a scheme to aid Iran’s rogue nuclear program.
Questions have arisen about the tangled ownership of MCS, which until recently was tied to a former Iranian minister of intelligence, and about the blocked attempt to export sophisticated machinery to Iran.
MCS has never been cited for violating sanctions on trade with Iran, and one of the company’s owners said it has done nothing wrong.
“For sure, the Iranian people try all their best to turn around the sanctions, but not in my company,” said Eshagh Hajizadeh, a Canadian citizen who bought the assets of the company in 2011. “I never want anybody in this world to have access to nuclear. It is against humanity.”
With the United States, Germany and other Western countries trying to tighten sanctions on Iran to slow its nuclear program, the MCS mystery demonstrates the difficulty of tracking the flow of technology and material that have civilian and military applications.
