VIENNA - United Nations investigators want Iran to explain an organizational chart linking projects to process uranium, test explosives, and modify a missile cone for a nuclear payload, diplomats briefed on the matter say.
They said a top UN nuclear watchdog official last week gave a detailed presentation of intelligence alleging illicit atomic "weaponization studies" by Iran and naming the man who ran them for the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.
In a written summary, they said Iran had refused to let inspectors interview Mohsen Fakrizadeh or visit sites where the experiments took place.
The summary also confirmed leaks that the briefing for the first time indicated Iran continued the three projects into 2004, calling into question a US intelligence estimate in December that said Iran shelved weaponization research in 2003.
"This presentation was a graphic demonstration that . . . amplifies the concerns we've had for a number for years. And we are waiting for answers," Simon Smith, British ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters after the Feb. 25 briefing.
The disclosures came as the United States and key European allies were piling pressure on four developing nations on the UN Security Council to vote for sanctions against Iran today for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment program.
Iran says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and has dismissed the intelligence, key bits from a laptop smuggled out of the Islamic republic and passed to Washington, as baseless, forged or irrelevant.
But Iran's enrichment could be turned to fueling atom bombs and power plants and it hid the program from the UN nonproliferation watchdog until 2003 after exposure by exiled Iranian dissidents.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it remains to be seen whether the new intelligence details are correct, but it is demanding a full response from Iran, not just denials lacking evidence.
Fakrizadeh, a military officer, earlier headed a military-affiliated physics research center that was razed in 2004 after the agency asked to inspect it for signs of undeclared nuclear research.
In the power-point presentation, Olli Heinonen, safeguards chief for the watchdog agency, displayed an diagram linking the three projects with numbered code names - "5" for processing nuclear fuel, "110" for purported tests of an atomic device, and "111" for a longer-range, Shahab-3 missile adapted to carry it.
Project 111 was also known as the "Orchid Office."
One of dozens of slides screened by Heinonen cited a progress report on the related projects for the period July 9, 2003 to Jan. 14, 2004. Other files showed the warhead design project began in July 2002.
US spy services estimated Iran halted outright "weaponization" work in 2003 but also said it continued efforts to master technology applicable to yielding nuclear explosives.
Iran had said its explosives tests were for conventional arms only, Heinonen told diplomats from the 35-nation board of governors for the nuclear agency who will discuss Iran at a meeting today.
Heinonen cited documentation from "Project 111" showing steps, including mathematical simulations, to design a "spherical warhead", suitable for the Shahab-3 missile, that would explode at a height of 2,000 feet. He said that altitude excluded the possibility that the warheads would be for chemical or biological weapons.
