[Washington Post] Joby Warrick - The sudden flurry of digging seen in recent satellite photos of a mountainside in the back yard of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility appears to be the start of a major tunnel complex inside the mountain. The construction has raised concerns at the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The tunnel complex certainly appears to be related to Natanz," said David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector. In a report analyzing the photos, officials of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) compared the new Natanz construction with a tunnel built by Iran inside a mountain near Esfahan, home to a major nuclear research center and a factory that converts uranium to a form that can be enriched at Natanz. Iran began the work at Esfahan in 2004, digging a large, two-entrance mountain tunnel that it later acknowledged was meant for nuclear storage. "Such a tunnel inside a mountain would offer excellent protection from an aerial attack," said the ISIS report.
2007-07-09 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive