DEBKA, add salt, EFL:
On Wednesday, November 17, outgoing US secretary of state Colin Powell said to reporters during a South American tour: US has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons. "I have seen information that they not only have the missiles but are working hard to put the two together." The highly classified, unverified information Powell referred to was described in more detail by the Washington Post the next day: According to one official with access to the material, a "walk-in" source approached US intelligence earlier this month with more than 1,000 pages purported to be Iranian drawings and technical documents, including a nuclear warhead design and modifications to enable Iranian ballistic missiles to delivery an atomic strike.
| Most likely from The National Council of Resistance of Iran |
The warhead design is based on implosion and adjustments aimed at fitting the warhead on existing Iranian missiles. DEBKAfile's military experts believe the data referred to the Shehab-3 and its improved version, the Shehab-4. The US official said he would not have revealed this much had not Powell alluded to the intelligence publicly. If the information is confirmed, it would mean the Islamic republic is further along than previously known in developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 182 just out on Friday, November 19, was the first publication to name the Nour garden suburb of Lavizan in northeast Tehran as yet another covert site Iran has concealed from the IAEA. There, not only is enrichment going forward but also tests on lethal gases and weaponized biological agents.
According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, the Pentagon's most recent game model on military measures to dispose of Iran's nuclear threat concludes it will be necessary to topple the Islamic republic's regime at the same time. |