Iran Redline

The public revelation of Iran's atomic archives continues to cause ripples, with the United States Treasury the latest government authority to delve into the documents pinched from under the nose of Iran's intelligence agencies. On 22 March, the Treasury released an extensive list ( here and here ) of sanctions designations targeted directly at SPND ( سازمان پژوهش ‌ های نوین دفاعی ), the Iranian military research organisation responsible for curating (and losing) the extensive records of Iran's pre-2003 nuclear weapons programme.  This news must have been a real blow to scientists and other staff working at SPND, many of whom are already upset by stressful working conditions under Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Now they will find their freedom to travel, to publish and to speak academically, as well as their future work prospects,(even more) severely limited. These sanctions basically mean that SPND and its employees can forget about ever getting a bank account with anyth...

Here's a sentence we never thought we'd have to write: SPND has built a bus. Yes, SPND - the Iranian defence research organisation that's basically a halfway house for Iranian scientists who are addicted to nuclear weapons. With all of their funding and great minds they've come together to create something that looks like a school science project. How amazing.  Maybe this cartoon (one of my favorite shows) is where Fakhrizadeh and his friends get their best ideas? Let's backtrack a bit on how we found out about this story. Our Redline team was happily chowing down on some chelow kebab and reviewing the latest news updates from our friends at Iran's Ministry of Defence (shout out to http://www.defanews.ir/ !). In an otherwise extremely tedious press release from October2018 about the launch  of a new portable x-ray device for monitoring truck cargo, one of our eagle-eyed correspondents spotted a familiar logo.  Here it is: And f...

While we sip on pomegranate juice and throw pistachio shells around the office with carefree abandon, Redline is also enjoying the fallout (pardon the pun) from the revelations of the so-called Atomic Archive , the stash of incriminating paperwork nabbed by the Mossad from Iran. The Atomic Archive has lots of juicy details about Iran's pre-2003 nuclear weapons programme, and provides unparalleled insights into Iran's crash effort to build nukes in the early 2000s. Those analysts who've been granted access to parts of the archive have shown that Iran got much further towards preparing fissile material for use in nuclear weapons than has generally been understood in the public domain. From covert facilities under mountains for uranium enrichment to, erm, covert facilities under mountains for uranium metallurgy , the archive shows that Iran's plan for putting nukes together was real and extensive. And thank God that the Supreme Leader got antsy and pulled the pin on t...