WASHINGTON — Members of an Iranian rebel group said Wednesday that Iran is building at least two secret sites to support its nuclear weapons program.
Citing sources inside the Iranian government, officials with the National Council of Resistance of Iran said the sites are a nuclear fuel production plant and research lab at Natanz and a heavy water production plant at Arak. Both sites are in central Iran south of the capital of Tehran.
"These two nuclear sites have been kept secret until now," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the representative of the organization in the United States, at a press conference.
Both sites are close to completion, Jafarzadeh said. Heavy water from the Arak plant could be used to support reactors capable of producing material for nuclear weapons, he said.
U.S. officials familiar with the rebels' charges declined to comment on the specifics of their claims. However, the officials acknowledged that Iran is moving forward with its clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Earlier this year, CIA Director George J. Tenet said U.S. intelligence is worried countries like Iran may make "sudden leaps" in their nuclear programs.
"Tehran may be able to indigenously produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by late this decade," Tenet told a congressional committee in March.
Much of the public attention given to Iran's nuclear effort focuses on a power reactor at Bushehr, which is being built with Russian assistance. But the design of the reactor, as well as international agreements for oversight of its operation, are expected to prevent it from being used to make material that can be used in nuclear weapons.
Instead, the primary concern about the reactor is that it will lead to more expertise in nuclear matters in Iran, benefiting its weapons program, U.S. officials say.
Jafarzadeh's group, based in Paris, is a government-in-exile that advocates violent overthrow of the religious government that rules Iran. Officials say they want to install a democratic government in Iran that protects human rights.
The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, but this didn't prevent it from holding a press conference in a posh Washington hotel two blocks from the White House on Wednesday.
The State Department accuses the group of being the same as the "People's Mujahideen" or Mujahedin-e Khalq, which it alleges has Marxist sympathies and killed several Americans in Iran in the 1970s.
The groups deny any communist leanings, and some experts attribute the killings to a splinter faction that the main organization did not control. National Council officials also say the Mujahedin-e-Khalq is not the same organization but a member of its coalition of groups.
A significant number within the U.S. Congress have supported removing the group's terrorist designation because it opposes the Iranian government. Jafarzadeh said the U.S. government first put his group on the list in 1997 to appease moderate elements within the Iranian government.
It also receives support from the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, an enemy of the government of Iran, according to the State Department, which also says both Iraq and Iran are supporters of terrorism.
"It's a terrorist organization. It's listed as such, designated as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law," State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said Wednesday. He referred questions about the group's U.S. operations to the Justice Department, which had no immediate comment on Wednesday.