Radiation leaking from Iran’s nuke plant

By Reza Kahlili

Radiation is leaking from Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, which suffered devastating explosions on Jan. 21, WND has learned, and the regime has ordered millions of antidote iodine pills from Russia and Ukraine amid fears the radioactivity will spread.

Many of the personnel, who arrived after the explosion to assist with the cleanup at the site, have been taken to a military hospital suffering from headache, nausea and vomiting, according to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow.

A special team of nuclear experts was ordered to the site days ago, the source said, and detected high levels of radiation.

Fordow fuel enrichment plant - DigitalGlobe image on day of reported explosion, Jan. 21, 2013

The number of confirmed dead from the explosions has risen to 76, said the source, who provided exclusively to WND the names of 14 Iranian scientists and one North Korean who died in the blasts.

Security forces have arrested 17 high-ranking officers, including majors and colonels, over the incident and summarily executed Maj. Ali Montazernia, a member of the security forces in charge at Fordow.

The Islamic regime has put up a wall of silence surrounding the explosions, but with the possibility of radioactive fallout creating grave health and environmental disasters in the nearby holy city of Qom and other surrounding cities, it may not be able to maintain the secret, the source suggested.

WND reported exclusively on Jan. 24 that explosions rocked Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow on Jan. 21, with updates on Jan. 27, 29, 30, 31, and Feb. 3, 6, 13 and 23. The blasts at first trapped 219 workers, including 16 North Koreans: 14 technicians and two military attaches.

Iran denied the incident, and its official news agency, IRNA, in a report, called WND a “mouthpiece of the CIA” and Reza Kahlili a CIA agent whose reporting was mere propaganda by the West. Regime media have also attacked Hamidreza Zakeri, a former officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, now living in Europe, who has provided information on the Fordow explosion and other valuable insights into the regime’s illicit nuclear activities.

In an unusual move on Jan. 29, the spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, Gill Tudor, emailed reporters a brief statement: “We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with our observations.”

When pushed by WND, however, Tudor could neither confirm nor deny the incident had taken place and would not say whether IAEA inspectors had visited the site after the explosions, despite some media reports that they had.

The IAEA’s latest report, released on Feb. 21, states that a physical inspection of Fordow was done between Nov. 26 and Dec. 3, well before the reported explosions. The report said that as of Feb. 17, Iran continued to feed hexafluoride gas into all four cascades of centrifuges at Fordow to enrich uranium, but this information was solely based on what Iranian officials told the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Even the regime’s Fars News Agency, in covering the recent IAEA report, confessed to that by running this headline: “Fordow site is active, according to information provided by Iran to the IAEA.”

The Fars story reported, “The IAEA in part of its report verifies that the Fordow site, based on the Design Information Questioner filed by Iran, is active.”

The Fars story shows a high level of uncertainty even within Iran about whether Fordow suffered the explosions, WND’s source said, and the regime is trying to keep morale high for its forces and allies, because the Fordow explosions would show the regime’s deep vulnerability.

Iranian officials have repeatedly lied about previous acts of sabotage, including the effect of the Stuxnet virus and the status of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The BBC, in a Feb. 22 report, said the Bushehr plant has again been shut down and that Russia has confirmed it, despite the Iranian regime’s earlier denial.

IAEA officials were denied access to Fordow during their last inspection trip. IAEA requests to inspect the Parchin military site and four other suspect sites were also denied. The regime also failed to respond to IAEA inquiries on its activity involving laser technology for uranium enrichment.

An exclusive WND report on Jan. 22 revealed that Russians are helping to enrich uranium using lasers at the secret Bonab site. The IAEA has revealed that Iran’s heavy-water plant in Arak could likely become operational in the first quarter of 2014. The plant, once live, could provide enough plutonium for several bombs just in its first year of operation.

The latest IAEA report also indicated that the regime has started the process of installing its advanced centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear facility, which the U.S. State Department called “yet another provocative step.”

Furthermore, 252 parliamentarians of the Islamic regime issued a statement today asserting, “There is no stopping in the Iran’s nuclear train,” and that despite the psychological war by America and all the sanctions in place, the country’s nuclear program will continue.

The statement advises America and “its western allies” to accept the reality of the Islamic regime’s nuclear program and change their policies.

DigitalGlobe image Jan. 21, 2013 - Across from Fordow Plant, written on the mountain in Farsi: "Fadayat Rahbar," to be sacrificed for the leader - and in smaller print: "Sar Allah," shedding blood for Allah, or blood for the path of Allah

Iran and the 5-plus-1 countries (the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) are to hold another round of nuclear talks on Feb. 26 in Kazakhstan, though expectations are low for any meaningful process.

Although the West has demanded Fordow be shut down as a precondition to easing sanctions, and though Iran has responded that it won’t comply, this is merely a political game, WND’s source said, in which the West knows what has happened at Fordow and is leaving a face-saving way out for Iran to still engage in dialogue to avoid further pressure. Despite this, the regime is actively trying to develop nuclear weapons at several secret sites.

The source provide these names of those killed at Fordow:

  • Five from a research team of the Center for Defensive Studies of the Jame Imam Hossein University of Tehran: Mohammad Rosham Entezar, Samad Doorbash, Jalal Namdar, Abdolreza Samadi and Mehdi Sufiaei.
  • Three from the Center for Research and Nuclear Support of Imam Hossein University in Tehran: Ali Ebadi, Majid Fakhri and Mehdi Jasoor.
  • Two from Physics University of Isfahan: Ahmad Abdolahipour and Alireza Parhizkar.
  • One from the University of Tabriz, Faculty of Physics: Hassan Soltan Nejad.
  • Three from Sharif University of Technology – The Center for Research of Physics: Faramarz Naghsh Ara, Hamid Boroostani and Saeid Fazeli.
  • One North Korean from the Atomic Research Center of Yongbyon: Chin-Hae Kang-Jun

WND will attempt to contact the families of the named deceased to further verify the report, although initial feedback verifies that the immediate families of the deceased are being monitored by Iranian regime security forces.

Reza Kahlili

Reza Kahlili, author of the award-winning book "A Time to Betray," served in CIA Directorate of Operations, as a spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, counterterrorism expert; currently serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board to Congress and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). He regularly appears in national and international media as an expert on Iran and counterterrorism in the Middle East. Read more of Reza Kahlili's articles here.


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