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Iranian missile test

Report: Evidence points to secret ICBM test site in Iran

NYT reveals information on evidence pointing to continued clandestine missiles program in remote desert facility in Iran that was widely believed to have been destroyed in 2011.

Five years since a long-range missile testing facility in a desert in the Iranian city of Shahrud was destroyed in an explosion, Western intelligence officials believed that Tehran had abandoned the site.

 

 

However, a New York Times report published on Wednesday claims that a group of American weapons experts have been looking closely at new satellite images from the site and are now warning that Iran is surreptitiously developing intercontinental missiles there which will be capable of reaching Israel, Europe and the US itself.

 

Senior officials at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in California suggest that they have found a trove of evidence of advanced technological development for missiles. 

 

 

“The investigation highlights some potentially disturbing developments,” said Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the INSS who reviewed the material and who was quoted in the NYT.

 

A breakthrough in the discovery came by surprise when last year an Iranian site published a photo of a senior Iranian missile development programmer Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who presided over the development of a secret, second facility in the Iranian desert which experts say is operating to this day.

 

Moghaddam was killed in 2011 in a mysterious explosion at a missiles site, which was attributed to the Israeli Mossad. Dozens more people belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were also killed in the blast.

 

In 2017, the report explains, a significant clue fell into the hands of Western intelligence agencies about where the work on the missiles was taking place when an Iranian journalists association posted a photo of Moghaddam standing next to a senior lieutenant and a box marked “Shahrud.”

 

The American researchers stumbled across the Iranian facility shortly after a young research fellow, Fabian Hinz, proposed studying Iranian state media material on Moghaddam to see whether it could provide any information on the extent of Iran’s missile program prior to his death.

 

Comments made by Moghaddam’s colleagues and family members in the Iranian media indicated that his work had not ended with his death, the researchers say.

 

Suspicious of the continuation of his work, Americans analysing satellite images of the area began to take a closer look, which soon convinced them that the program was still underway.

 

“Poring over years of satellite imagery, the researchers noticed something: The number of buildings, they say, had slowly increased over time,” the report says.

 

“They also spotted a detail that would stand out only to an obsessive follower of General Moghaddam’s career: The buildings were painted a striking aquamarine,” it continues.

 

“General Moghaddam, known as eccentric and strong willed, had ordered his first facility, the one that was destroyed, painted that color. Now the same color appeared 300 miles away on a cluster of nondescript buildings in the desert,” the report explains.

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (Photo: EPA)
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (Photo: EPA)

 

While the color of the paint was not in and of itself incontrovertible evidence of the continuation of the clandestine program, the closer inspection revealed a host of further evidence.

 

For example, the agencies began to detect ground scars around Shahrud that were likely caused by the testing of missiles.

 

“The researchers, piecing through satellite photos of the area around Shahrud, found, in a crater a few kilometers away, what they say were two telltale ground scars. They were larger than those at General Moghaddam’s publicly known facility,” according to the report, which also noted that the scars were fresh, with one appearing in 2016 and the other as recently as June 2017.

 

After studying the missile test stands, which are required to be installed outdoors, the researchers concluded that the stand weighed around 370 tons with a power capability sufficient for intercontinental missiles. Two other stands were even larger.

 

Other clues began to emerge, including the discovery of three pits usually used for creating rocket components, according to the researchers. One of the pits was notably larger than the sort used for Tehran’s medium-range missiles.

 

Using an advanced form of satellite imagery analysis, the researchers were able to show prove that the site was being used.

 

“We can see human traffic, human activity that isn’t visible on your traditional satellite,” said David Schmerler, one of the California-based researchers. “They’ve been driving all over the crater where the engine tests are done.”

 

Further evidence came to light from the absence of fuel that could be detected at the site, which the experts say raises the possibility that the facility is building engines that burn solid fuel, which is more dangerous and more difficult to develop than liquid fuel and which also can be applied both to civil as well as military programs.

 

“Liquid-fueled missiles must be fueled right before launch, which requires time and access to special fueling facilities, making them easier for enemy forces to find and destroy. But solid-fueled missiles can be hidden in remote locations and fired at a moment’s notice,” the report explains.

 

David Wright, a missile expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has noted the unusual choice to burn solid fuel if the site is intended for a civil space program.

 

“If the goal is to launch satellites, it makes more sense to use liquid-fuel rockets,” he said, adding that solid fuel is “a convenient way to also develop the technology for a solid ICBM.”

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.25.18, 10:53
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