At a May 8, 2025 press briefing at its Washington, D.C. office, the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), revealed newly-confirmed details about yet another Iranian regime nuclear weapons site.
This one is located in a mountainous region near Ivanaki, in Semnan Province to the southeast of Tehran.
Part of a relatively new network of sites, this project is one of four established in Semnan Province following the 2018 exposure of the AMAD Plan: the Ivanaki site, Garmsar Radar Site, Shahroud Missile Site, and the Semnan Missile Site.
Each of these operates under cover of front companies, such as a chemical production facility for the oil and petrochemical industries, as with the Ivanaki site.
In fact, however, all of these are under the authority of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND In the Farsi acronym). SPND operates under the Iranian Department of Defense and IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), which direct Iran’s overall nuclear weapons program, including enrichment, warhead development, and ballistic missiles.
As I wrote in earlier columns at this blog site — here, here, and here — following the takedown of its "Ring of Fire" jihadi terror proxies last year (Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah), collapse of the Damascus regime, plus loss of much of its air defenses, the Iranian regime accelerated its nuclear weapons program.
In my Dec. 26, 2024 column, I described regime work on Exploding Bridgewire (EBW) nuclear detonators, which are a key element in the development of an implosion type nuclear device.
This work went on at the Sanjarian facility located in a military zone in the vicinity of the village of Sanjarian.
This site is not far from the Parchin site, also southeast of Tehran, where an Israeli retaliatory strike in late October of 2024 destroyed equipment used to shape and test the plastic explosives around the exterior of a nuclear device that initiate the nuclear chain reaction.
Following a Jan. 31 2025 press briefing by NCRI Deputy Director Alireza Jafarzadeh, I posted again about the Iranian regime’s race to fit nuclear warheads to its arsenal of solid-fuel Ghaem-100 ballistic missiles that are based on original North Korean missile designs.
These are long-range missiles that can reach over 3,000 kilometers.
Notable about that briefing was information about work at the Shahrud and Semnan missile development sites, specifically the fact that warhead work was ongoing at both of those.
That warhead work is going on at missile development sites can only indicate that Iran is in final stages of work to prepare and fit its warheads to the nosecones of those missiles.
Then, in my April 8 2025 opinion article, I shared my surprise at statements made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at an open March 25 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in which she stated that the U.S. Intelligence Community still did not assess that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Given all the available open source (in addition to what must be significant classified) information, her testimony was startling.
The new information revealed by the NCRI at its May 8, 2025 press briefing only added to the overall picture of a regime racing to complete its decades-long drive to achieve deliverable nuclear weapons.
Key to the 8 May 2025 NCRI briefing was information that the Ivanaki site — called the "Rangin Kaman" or "Rainbow" site after a nearby mountain range — was focused on construction of nuclear weapon components including extraction and development of tritium and deuterium, used to boost the yield of a fission nuclear weapon.
Tritium and Deuterium can also be used in the development of a hydrogen bomb.
The site, built over a period of years from 2009 to the present, covers an area of nearly 2,500 acres, is tightly secured under military control.
In addition to above-ground buildings, the site includes a significant portion underground. According to NCRI reporting obtained from its sources inside Iran, the SPND Organization has been recruiting and employing nuclear fusion and tritium specialists, some of whom were transferred to SPND from the Nuclear Fusion Division of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
In the midst of these revelations about Iran’s nuclear weapons program the Trump administration continues with round after round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, held in Rome, Italy and Muscat, Oman.
We’ll recall that in early March 2025, U.S. President Donald J. Trump gave the Iranian regime 60 days to agree to complete, permanent, verifiable dismantlement of its entire nuclear weapons program, including enrichment, warheads, and missile delivery systems.
Since then, he has repeatedly declared that Iran will never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons or the means to produce them.
Unfortunately, that 60-day deadline has now passed with no Iranian commitment to dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program — in fact, quite the opposite — but also no U.S. consequences for that failure.
Conflicting messages about exactly how and to what extent that dismantlement would happen continue to come from senior Trump administration officials, including U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.
The official USG focus has been on Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities, production, and stockpiles.
It's time to expand that focus to the SPND development of nuclear warheads and the means to affix them to missile nosecones and achieve the capability to boost and detonate them.
(A related story may be found here.)
Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC. Read More Clare M. Lopez — Here.