![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/07\/madan-sharg-site-200.jpg\" "\\"madan-sharg-site-200\\"")
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AFP –\u00a0<\/strong>An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed on Thursday to have evidence of a hidden nuclear site located in tunnels beneath a mountain near the town of Damavand, 70 kilometres (44 miles) northeast of Tehran.<\/p>\n The Paris-based militant group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), alleges the site has existed since 2006 with the first series of subterranean tunnels and four external depots recently completed.<\/p>\n The group also claims the recently elected president Hassan Rohani, a former nuclear negotiator, had a “key role” in the programme.<\/p>\n Founded in the 1960s to oppose the rule of the Shah, the MEK was considered a terrorist organisation by the United States until last year, and has provided information about the Iranian nuclear programme on several occasions.<\/p>\n “The organisation of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) has discovered credible evidence of a secret new nuclear site, gathered over a year by 50 sources in various parts of the regime,” said a statement from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the umbrella group of which MEK is a part.<\/p>\n “The codename of the project is ‘Ma’adane-e Charq’ (literally ‘the mine of the east’) or ‘Project Kossar’. This site is hidden in a series of tunnels under a mountain near the town of Damavand,” it said.<\/p>\n The report added that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is also a managing director of a company the MEK claims is overseeing the project’s “nuclear, biological and chemical programmes.”<\/p>\n The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has attempted to speak to Fakhrizadeh in the past without success.<\/p>\n The “next phase” of the project will be the construction of up to 30 tunnels and 30 depots, the report added.<\/p>\n The report concluded: “These revelations demonstrate once again that the Mullahs’ regime has no intention of stopping or even suspending the development of a nuclear weapon,” the MEK said, calling on the IAEA to visit the secret site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AFP – An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed on Thursday to have evidence of a hidden nuclear site located in tunnels beneath a mountain near the town of Damavand, 70 kilometres […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[175],"class_list":{"0":"post-14143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nuclear","7":"tag-updated"},"yoast_head":"\n