Last week, the
Trump administration served notice it was taking on Iran just before an Iranian
dissident group outed another covert nuclear facility involved in what surely
must be a weaponization program.
Tuesday,
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified to
Congress that Iran was in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, the July 2015 agreement between Iran and the P5+1, the five permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, and the European Union.
The
certification is the Trump administration’s first. Certifications are required
every 90 days by the terms of the agreement.
The
same day, Tillerson condemned Iran and announced that the administration is
conducting an interagency review of the JCPOA, as the landmark deal is known.
Perhaps
the administration was too hasty with the certification. Friday, the National
Council of Resistance of Iran, a controversial dissident group that has
targeted Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, charged that
Iran is conducting explosives testing at a facility south of Tehran, within the
infamous Parchin military base.
The
testing, inside buildings in an area known at Plan 6, would be a violation of
the JCPOA. Explosives are used to trigger a nuclear device.
“The
engineering unit that is charged and tasked with actually building the bomb in
a secret way for the Iranian regime is called the Organization of Defensive
Innovation and Research,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of NCRI’s
Washington office, at a press conference. “Our information shows that their
activities have been continuing in full gear, despite the JCPOA.”
NCRI
accurately outed Iran’s underground uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz and the
heavy-water production facility at Arak but has sometimes misfired in its
allegations.
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