Iranian bomb designer identified

Sunday Times:

A senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has emerged as the father of a nuclear programme that western intelligence services believe is aimed at producing a warhead capable of devastating any city in the Middle East.

Ostensibly a lecturer in physics at Tehran’s Imam Hussein University, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi is seen as the Iranian equivalent of A Q Khan, the scientist who led Pakistan’s nuclear weapons race with India.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of groups opposed to the regime in Tehran, was the first to identify Fakhrizadeh, 47, as one of the leading figures in Iran’s nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also named him as the man it would most like to interview about the programme, adding that despite repeated requests the Iranian government has refused access.

Intelligence shown to IAEA representatives last month included documents from an Iranian laptop computer. It named Fakhrizadeh as the man in charge. A personnel list had Fakhrizadeh at the top of the organisation running the programme, while other documents showed him setting budgets for research and laying down rules on how much of their work the project’s scientists could discuss with colleagues.

It backs up suggestions that Fakhrizadeh is the head of “Project 111”, an Iranian attempt to produce a nuclear warhead capable of exploding at 2,000ft and causing devastation over a wide area.

The material on the laptop obtained by US intelligence suggested a warhead would be designed to fit Iran’s Shahab-3 missile. Israel is seen as the most likely target.

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Does the NIE on Iran still make any sense? Some of the other people who have been identified as working on the bomb project have "woke up dead." I am sure this guy is looking over his shoulder a lot. The Israeli missile will probably much smaller--about 9 mm.