Iran Revolutionary Guards on a fast track to proliferate WMDs

Reza Shafa
In the afternoon of November 13, a series of explosions rocked Parchin Military Site in southern outskirts of Tehran. As a result, several military personnel of the site were injured. The blaze which followed the explosion reminded everyone that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is going full steam ahead with its quest for WMD. Shrapnel coming off the missiles stored in the huge storage spaces especially built for the purpose, set on fire eight other places and sent columns of debris  and smoke into the air.

 

Four military personnel of the base identified as Mostafa Nourizadeh, Alireza Verdi-lou, Nasser Rezai, and Morteza Motahari, working on missile projects, were injured and rushed to nearby hospital for treatments.

Parchin military complex

The complex located thirty kilometers south of Tehran, is a sprawling sixty square kilometer site. Workshops and defense related industries located in Parchin belong to the Ministry of Defense (The Defense Industries Organization, Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization, and Institution for Research and Training of the Defense Industries).

The huge site is divided into eleven various projects for production of different weapons and munitions:

•    Project one and two are for research and production of chemical weapons;
•    Project three is for research and development of various types of munitions;
•    Project four is for development of Cruise Missile. The plan is consisted of separate workshops: Shahid Moslemi, Shahid Sanyani, Shahid Fasihi, Shahid Rahemi, and Shahid Alam-al-hoda;
•    Project five and six are for developing chemical weapons;
•    Project seven is dealing with manufacturing cruise missiles with a huge workshop called Shahid Bakeri;
•    Project eight is also producing chemical weapons and is supporting the project four which has been mentioned above and is especially working on development of cruise missiles;
•    Project nine is also making missile parts;
•    Project ten in Parchin belongs to Air and Sea Defense Industry Group. However the most widespread research and development project in Parchin has to do with chemical weapons;
•    The last project in the facility is also manufacturing missile parts.

In Parchin’s missile project, in additions to Cruise missiles, there are other missiles in the making such as: Oqab (Eagle), Nazeat, both of which are air-to-air and land-to-air missiles, respectively. In the same division of the facility, solid fuel for missiles is also manufactured.

Parts of the Parchin site are devoted to conducting research on uranium enrichment using laser technology. The project is supervised by two engineers Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his associate Mohammad Bassam both top experts of the IRGC. It is widely believed that these two have been working on the development of nuclear weapons.

In February, 2005, the Iranian Resistance revealed the Parchin Complex and its tunnels which were developed secretly.  The facility is run by the Air and Space Organization (ASO).

The wide range of military activities at Parchin does not stop at manufacturing missiles of different sorts; interestingly, the Chemical Project is very busy making the new generation of Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) especially ordered by the Qods Force to supply to its proxies in Iraq. Kalantari, a specialist and director of Quality Control at project five of Parchin facility is overseeing the manufacturing process.

The testing grounds for newly developed EFPs are a military drilling field called Hesar Amir belonging to the Defense Ministry. The field is located in the extended Parchin Complex which is the main testing grounds for all newly manufactured products.

The Explosion in Parchin highlighted the IRGC’s ill intentions not only in proliferating WMD, but a more acute problem in Iraq that is the manufacture of the EFP’s.

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Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime’s intelligence networks