* New IAEA report on Iran due out in days
* Iran nuclear "cover-up" could be worse than thought
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 (Reuters) - An Iranian research
center that has been investigated by U.N. nuclear inspectors
appears to have played a key role in Tehran's atomic program,
which Western powers fear is aimed at producing weapons,
according to a new report released on Wednesday.
The study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and
International Security (ISIS) will likely cast further doubt on
Tehran's denials that it is seeking atomic bombs as the U.N.
nuclear agency prepares to publish a new report on Iran in the
coming days.
Iran's Physics Research Center was established in 1989 "as
part of an effort to create an undeclared nuclear program,"
according to ISIS's president David Albright, a nuclear expert
and former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), as well as Andrea Stricker and Paul Brannan.
"Although Iran has admitted that the PHRC was related to the
military and had a nuclear purpose in the area of defense
preparedness and radiation detection, its actual nuclear role
appears much more extensive," the ISIS report said.
The Iranian research center was established a year after the
end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam Hussein's
troops used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers.
According to the U.N. nuclear watchdog's November 2011
report on Iran, the Physics Research Center was established at
Lavizan, a complex near a military installation in Tehran.
Lavizan was completely razed in late 2003 and early 2004.
Western diplomats and intelligence sources said at the time that
they suspected Tehran was conducting undeclared nuclear
activities at Lavizan and was determined to cover them up.
ISIS said it has acquired more than 1,600 telexes relating
to the nuclear procurement activities of the Physics Research
Center and Sharif University, another Iranian institution
involved in Tehran's nuclear research, in the 1990s.
"Iran has failed to declare all of PHRC's activities to the
(IAEA)," the Albright group's report says. "Iran has stated to
the IAEA that the PHRC procurements were not related to a
nuclear program. The information assembled in this ISIS report,
however, contradicts this claim."
EXTENSIVE COVER-UP?
If the allegations are confirmed, they could show that
Iran's suspected nuclear cover-up is far more extensive than was
previously known. This may annoy Iranian allies such as Russia
and China, which have slowed the push for new sanctions on Iran
while pressing Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA.
While the exact nature and full scope of the Physics
Research Center's nuclear-related activities "remains difficult
to fully understand," Albright's report said it is time for the
Iranians to come clean about the center's past work.
"Iran should clarify PHRC's exact purpose and
accomplishments and its relationship to the IAEA's broader
question of the military dimensions of Iran's nuclear effort,"
the report said.
U.N. nuclear officials have repeatedly complained that Iran
has not fully cooperated with their attempts to shed light on
the full extent of Iran's nuclear program, which it kept hidden
from agency inspectors for nearly two decades until 2003.
The IAEA sent several senior officials to Iran recently to
persuade Tehran to grant them greater access to the nuclear
facilities but failed to win any pledges to boost cooperation.
The setback could raise the risk of confrontation between Iran
and the West.
The IAEA has been looking into the Physics Research Center,
which acted as an umbrella organization under Iran's defense
ministry and coordinated various nuclear activities.
According to the IAEA, by the early 2000s, the Physics
Research Center's activities had been folded into the so-called
AMAD Plan, which was responsible for what the IAEA refers to as
"alleged studies" into research and development relevant to
building nuclear weapons.
(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; editing by Christopher Wilson)
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