As the world watches Israel's strikes on Iran, the question of whether Tehran actually has a nuclear warhead is being asked.
The largest opposition group to Iran's theocratic government believes it is on the verge of possessing one.
The U.S. office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran charged last week that Iran actually began secretly developing nuclear weapons in Semnan in 2009.
At a news conference in Washington D.C., the council's deputy director of its Washington office, Alireza Jafarzadeh, detailed Iran's latest plan to enhance their nuclear warhead.
This latest nuclear effort, according to Jafarzadeh, is known the Kavir Plan, and has replaced the previously dismantled AMAD plan. AMAD was an Iranian nuclear weapons development project that was launched in 1999 and suspended in 2003 after it was exposed in an inspection conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Kavir, which means "desert," uses Iran's Semnan province, which is about 60% desert, to conceal nuclear activity. About 36% of Semnan is either restricted or prohibited to civilians due to military control, and thus makes it ideal for covert weapons development, Jafarzadeh said.
He added that these new access limitations have led to "intensified surveillance on American and European tourists who actually travel for different purposes."
The council charged that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since 1989, initiated the weapons program. Soona Samsami, the U.S. representative for Iran's Parliament-in-exile, characterized the regime's actions as "concealment, deception, delayed, and destruction of the evidence."
The Iranian government has consistently claimed its nuclear activity has been strictly energy production based. But the council strongly disputes that claim and accused the regime of disguising the weapons work as energy work through subtle moves such as transferring 400 nuclear specialists from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to the Iran's Ministry of Defense.
As the conflict between Israel and Iran grows more intense and many call for U.S. intervention, the council emphasized that its appeal to the United States was not for military support or funding, but for the recognition of "the rights of the Iranian people to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," said Samsami.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Click Here Now.
(Alannah Peters is a rising senior at the University of Florida studying journalism and is a summer intern at Newsmax working with Mr. Gizzi)
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