By newsfirstusa 
The Islamic Republic of Iran has endured its pursuit of acquiring a nuclear weapon by means of now not simplest stockpiling enriched uranium to near-weapons grade purity, it has expanded its covert movements in creating its weaponization features.
In keeping with knowledge got by means of assets embedded within the Iranian regime and equipped to the Nationwide Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an opposition group primarily based out of D.C. and Paris, there are indications that Tehran has as soon as once more renewed efforts to progress its talent to detonate a nuclear weapon.
On the head of Iran’s detonators program is a company the NCRI has dubbed METFAZ, which is the Farsi acronym for the Middle for Analysis and Growth of Applied sciences on Explosions and Affect, and its fresh actions at a prior to now deactivated website online, referred to as Sanjarian, has drawn large hypothesis.
The Underpinning for Protection of Democracies has analyzed the place Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is positioned. (Underpinning for Protection of Democracies)
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“Our information shows the METFAZ has expanded its activities, intensified activities, and their main focus is basically the detonation of the nuclear bomb,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI within the U.S., instructed Fox Information Virtual. “When you make a bomb, you have the fissile material at the center of it, but you need to be able to trigger it, to detonate it, and that’s a sophisticated process.
“It’s noteceable to look what METFAZ does and apply their actions as a result of this is form of like a gauge on understanding the place the entire nuclear guns program is,” he added.
Iran has at least a dozen sites across the country dedicated to nuclear development, weaponization, research and heavy water production, but information shared with Fox News Digital suggests that there has been an increase in covert activity in at least two of these locations, including Sanjarian, which was once one of Iran’s top weaponization facilities.
The Sanjarian site, located roughly 25 miles east of Tehran and once central to Iran’s nuclear program under what is known as the Amad Plan, was believed to have been largely inactive between 2009 and late 2020 after stiff international pushback on Iran’s nuclear program.
The Sanjarian site in 2017, when the NCRI announced that its activities had moved to Plan 6 in Parchin. (Image provided by the NCRI)
Though by October 2020 renewed activity had returned to the area under the alleged guise of a filming team, first captured through satellite imagery and which the Islamic Republic used to justify why vehicles had reportedly been regularly parked outside the formerly top nuclear site.
In 2022, trees were planted along the entrance road to the compound, effectively blocking satellite imagery from monitoring vehicles stationed there, before a security gate was then believed to have been installed in May 2023, according to information also verified by the Institute for Science and International Security.
Sanjarian in 2024 (Image provided by the NCRI)
Now, according to details supplied by on-the-ground sources to the NCRI this month, top nuclear experts have been seen regularly visiting the site since April 2024 and are believed to be operating under the front company known as Arvin Kimia Abzaar, which claims to be affiliated with the oil and gas industry, a sector in which Iran has long attempted to conceal its activities.
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Jafarzadeh said one of the executives of the Arvin Kimia Abzaar company is Saeed Borji, who has been a well-known member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps since 1980 and has long headed METFAZ.
METFAZ falls under Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which is widely known to security experts as the organization spearheading Iran’s nuclear development and is suspected of using the Sanjarian site for renewed research on exoloding bridgewire (EWB) detonators.
Iran has previously attempted to conceal its EBW detonators program, a system first invented in the 1940s to deploy atomic warheads but which has expanded into non-military sectors, under activities relating to the oil industry.
In a 2015 report, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), famous that Iran’s detonator development was once an “integral a part of a program to manufacture an implosion-type nuclear explosive instrument.”
It also highlighted how Iran attempted to conceal its program by alleging during a May 20, 2014, meeting that the detonator program dating back to 2000-2003 was related to Tehran’s aerospace industry and was needed to “assistance forbid explosive injuries” but which the IAEA determined was “inconsistent with the time frame and unrelated to the detonator construction program.”
Technicians work at the Arak heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit as officials and media visit the site in December 2019. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran/AP)
During the same 2014 meeting, Iran claimed that “round 2007 its oil and fuel trade had recognized a demand for EBW detonators for the advance of deep borehole severing gadgets.”
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The IAEA assessed that time the appliance of EBW detonators, which might be fired inside of “sub-microsecond simultaneity,” are “now not inconsistent with specialised trade practices,” the detonators that Iran has developed “have traits related to a nuclear explosive instrument.”
“The Iranian regime has truly mainly, through the years, impaired misleading ways – lies, stalling, taking part in video games, dragging [their feet], losing occasion,” Jafarzadeh said when asked about this report. “That’s the best way they’re coping with the IAEA, with the function of shifting their very own nuclear guns program ahead with out being in control of anything else.”
The IAEA did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions on the NCRI’s most recent findings, which were shared with the nuclear watchdog this week, and it remains unclear what advancements or research Iran continues to pursue in the detonator field.
The launch of a Simorgh, or “Phoenix,” rocket is shown at the Imam Khomeini Space Launch Terminal in Iran’s Semnan province on Dec. 6, 2024. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)
“Day the global public and the IAEA have basically centered at the quantity and the enrichment stage of uranium Tehran possesses, which might grant fissile subject matter for the bomb, the central section, particularly the weaponization, has endured with tiny scrutiny,” Jafarzadeh told Fox News Digital.
The NCRI also found that METFAZ, which operates out of a military site known as Parchin some 30 miles southeast of Tehran, has expanded its Plan 6 complex where it conducts explosive tests and production.
Parchin, which is made up of several military industrial complexes, was targeted in Israel’s October 2024 strikes. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, the strikes destroyed “more than one structures” within the complex, including a “prime explosive take a look at chamber” known as Taleghan 2.
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Iran’s layered approach to its nuclear program, which relies on networks operating under the guise of privately owned companies, false operations and immense ambiguity, has made tracking Tehran’s nuclear program difficult for even agencies dedicated to nuclear security, like the IAEA, Jafarzadeh said.
“The regime has impaired misleading ways to forbid any mechanism for verification, and it has but to grant a chance or the manner for the IAEA to have a enough solution to the inquiries it has raised,” he told Fox News Digital. “Our revelation lately displays that the regime has disagree transparency similar to its program for development an atomic bomb and is shifting against development the bomb at a speedy day.”
The NCRI confirms that neither the Sanjarian website online nor Parchin’s Plan 6 have ever been inspected by means of the IAEA.