By: Reza Shafa
In 1980, the mullahs setting their eyes on the atomic bomb to guarantee the future of their regime assigned the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to open a center for research in nuclear weapons.
In 1981, in a briefing for the brand new Research Unit (RU) of the IRGC, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti, the number two man after Khomeini, described in great length the newly formed Islamic Republic’s absolute necessity for obtaining nuclear weapons.
Shortly after, in 1983, a special unit was setup to start a serious research for fulfilling the initial dream of going nuclear in line with what Beheshti said just two years ago. What followed was a series of cat and mouse games with the rest of the world to avoid the later outcomes of such ambitious plans.
First the research lab was located in a remote area in the woods in northern Tehran. Soon, some of the best scientists were brought into the center from the nation’s top universities. Center for Nuclear Energy belonging to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) ran a two-year program for each new specialist, mostly nuclear physicists, before allowing them to join. In the course of their research in pursuit of the knowledge of making the bomb, the specialists have been paid much higher than their peers in the universities.
Khomeini’s will behind acquiring the atomic bomb
In the winter of 1986, following the bloodiest drive to date in the sixth year of the Iran-Iraq war which the regime mobilized all its forces, Brig. Gen. Mohsen Rezaii then commander of the IRGC in a classified report for Khomeini concluded that there was no possibility in the next five years to have enough men to carryout a similar attack.
Shortly after Rezaii’s report, Khomeini realized that there was no way to win the war with conventional methods and he then ordered the IRGC to lay a solid foundation for obtaining nuclear weapons.
In 1987, Khomeini outlined the need for having nuclear weapons and ordered the AEOI and IRGC officials to plan for obtaining the bomb. Rezaii wasted no time by doing the following:
1. The IRGC’s RU was assigned to establish contact with Russians and Pakistanis in seeking their help in the regime’s nuclear projects;
2. Since 1987, one of RU’s subdivisions under the pretext of "technical training of IRGC’s Navy personnel," began research in developing nuclear weapons. The original facility for the research center was located in northern Tehran suburb of Niavaran. Simultaneously, the regime’s agents built good relations with the Russians and Pakistanis over receiving the engineering know how of nuclear weapons.
3. In 1987, Pakistan signed an agreement with the Iranian regime to send teams of Iranian nuclear physicists to that country to learn the new techniques.
4. Contacts with Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, were established in 1987. At least in two separate occasions three commanders of the IRGC met with A.Q. Khan in Tehran. Head of the team meeting with Khan was Mohammad Salami, director of IRGC’s Center for Scientific Research (CSR). At the time the CSR’s main task was to conduct studies on how to develop various types of weapons.
5. Mohsen Rezaii, the commander of the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq war in a meeting with three of the nuclear physic professors from Kerman University in southern Iran asked them to co-operate with the development of different parts of the nuclear weapons. Moreover, he promised to allocate $800m for the project.
6. The three men then traveled to Italy, Germany, and Japan to find ways the regime could obtain the technical expertise for making the first bomb. In the course of their visit to a nuclear facility in Italy, they examined closely three Neutron accelerators running in the center. The Iranian scientists handed over the blueprints of various labs in the Italian facility to the IRGC for their future use.
7. In 1987, the IRGC followed a parallel plan by opening research centers in nuclear physics departments in well-known Iranian schools such as Tehran and Shiraz Universities. Later, IRGC hired the graduates of these schools by offering them high salaries.
8. Between 1987 and 1992, a series of tests involving explosives were conducted in a few handpicked IRGC garrisons throughout the country. The purpose was to test implosions by using T.N.T. in gun barrels changed to stand such implosions. However, such tests stopped once the entire operations were transferred to defense ministry.
The IRGC started on its journey in the path of obtaining nuclear weapons with the blessing of Khomeini and later Khamenei as the men behind the mullahs’ ambition to go nuclear as an absolute necessity for their regime’s survival; a clandestine program which went on for 18 years and now that is revealed it has become the main source of concern for the world.
To be continued
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Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime’s intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on VAVAK (MOIS), IRGC’s Intelligence Office, and Quds Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.