An exiled opposition group claimed that Iran has been hiding an underground nuclear site since 2006. “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," according to a July 11 National Council of Resistance of Iran statement. The Paris-based MEK said the site is located underneath a mountain about 44 miles northeast of Tehran, near the town of Damavand. The group also claimed that President-elect Hassan Rouhani played a “key role” in the program.
But Tehran has denied the allegations as mere lies by a “desperate” group of exiles. “The terrorist MEK has been so discredited that the publication of such stories by them is not worth a response,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araghchi said on July 12. The United States had previously regarded the leftist MEK as a foreign terrorist organization for killing six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and attempting an attack against Iran’s U.N. mission in 1992. But the group renounced violence in 2001. And the State Department revoked the MEK’s terrorist designation in September 2012. The following are excerpted remarks by Araghchi and the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
“This report is by no means true and is denied… The terrorist MEK has been so discredited that the publication of such stories by them is not worth a response.”