Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of NCRI’s Washington office, presented the findings in a presentation covered by major media outlets. He said the People’s Mojahedin Organization’s network within Iran acquired the information.
“We are talking about an extensive covert operation by the Iranian regime,” Jafarzadeh said. “Our information shows that their activities have been continuing in full gear despite the JCPOA,” he said using the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the nuclear deal.
“The engineering unit that is charged and tasked with actually building the bomb in a secret way for the Iranian regime is called the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research,” Jafarzadeh said. It is known by its Persian acronym SPND (which is Sazman-e Pazhouheshhaye Novin-e Defa’i in Farsi). It has seven subdivisions, each of which carries out a certain portion of Iran’s nuclear program. READ MORE