Back to Brief on Iran
Iran has used Britain as the hub of a network to supply technology and materials for its production of missiles and nuclear weapons. A two-year investigation by customs officials and MI5, working with their European counterparts, has uncovered a trail stretching from London through Dosseldorf and Vienna to Tehran.
This will embarrass Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, who challenged America's strict sanctions against Iran last week and suggested a more lenient policy.
Customs investigators have evidence that Tehran planned to use Britain as the conduit for a high-strength steel of a grade used in missile casings and centrifuges for making bomb-grade uranium. Tehran's military scientists obtained other vital items, some disguised as medical equipment and car parts.
An Iranian-born businessman living in Britain has been charged with breaching British export controls. He is alleged to have posed as a commercial buyer while working as an agent for the Iranian military.
The case is linked to a front company in Dosseldorf that housed an office of the Defense Industries Organization, an arm of the Iranian defense ministry. When German authorities raided the office they discovered documents on a huge purchasing operation to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Experts fear the technology will enable Iran to build the first Islamic nuclear bomb within two years.
Iran's attempt to acquire the bomb by stealth raises questions over the conciliatory tone to Iran's ayatollahs adopted by European leaders….
The British arm of the network was
exposed by undercover officers from the Customs national investigation
service working with MI5's counter-proliferation unit.
Ansar-e-Hezbollah Attack Memorial Service, BBC, January 21
Islamic militants in Iran have attacked a meeting of the country's only tolerated opposition group, Iran's Freedom Movement (IFM), and beaten up some of its members. Several dozen hardliners from Ansar-e-Hezbollah (or Supporters of the Party of God) closed down the gates to a religious center in the capital, Tehran, and forcefully dispersed a crowd of several thousand people who had gathered for a memorial service on the anniversary of the death of the former Iranian prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan….
This is not the first time that the militant Ansar-e-Hizbollah takes the law into its own hands and attacks meetings which it deems to be against the interests of the Islamic Republic. Since President Khatami came to power in last August, the group repeatedly resorted to violence and attacked cinemas, university gatherings and dissident figures….
Because the group has several open
publications and its leaders are known, it's suspected that they have powerful
friends in the establishment who are protecting them….
Argentine TV Says Iranian Warns of Third Bombing, Reuter, January 19
BUENOS AIRES—An Argentine television investigation scheduled to be aired late Monday says a former Iranian diplomat who gave evidence on anti-Jewish bombings in Argentina in 1992 and 1994 has warned of a third attack.
Canal 9's main newscast, 24 Horas, obtained a copy of an Interior Ministry document warning security forces that former Iranian diplomat Monousheh Moatamer had given evidence of the danger of an attack this year -- possibly planned by Iran.
The document, a copy of which Canal 9 sent to Reuters, is signed by Undersecretary for Security Hugo Miranda, addressed to border police and coast guard authorities and refers to investigations into the two bombings that killed a total of 115 people.
"Evidence from Monousheh Moatamer in the United States confirmed there was a phone call where an official from the Iranian information ministry tells of an attack in 1998 in Argentina," says Miranda in the document dated last month….
In the document, Miranda said Moatamer's evidence was obtained in an interview with Argentine judge Juan Jose Galeano, who is investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 86 people.
Argentina has blamed Iranian-backed Muslim extremists for carrying out the AMIA bombing and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which killed 29 people…. Moatamer's first accusations against Iran, days after the AMIA bombing, led Judge Galeano to issue arrest warrants for four Iranian officials. But after a diplomatic spat, the arrest warrants were revoked and the Iran lead went cold….