NCRI – In a press conference in Washington, DC on Friday, April 21, 2017, the National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed that the “nerve center” of the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons project, responsible for designing a nuclear bomb, has been continuing its work.
The engineering unit for the regime’s nuclear weapons program is called the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research known by its Persian acronym SPND.
The information was gathered by the network of the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, through assets within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Defense Ministry, and SPND, and so on. It shows that following the establishment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, not only has the unit remained in place and active, it is now clear that in some fields its activities have even expanded.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, also known as Dr. Hassan Mohseni, is the key individual in the regime’s nuclear weapons program. He is a veteran IRGC brigadier general and continues to head SPND.
According to the NCRI, the organization is comprised of 7 subdivisions, each of which is carrying out a certain portion of nuclear weapons research.
