David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Washington based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) have allegedly identified, on commercial satellite imagery, a building that inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wanted to visit on February 21 but were denied access by Iranian delegates. The building, so Albright and Brannan, contains or used to contain the high-explosive test chamber mentioned in IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano’s November 2011 report on Iran’s nuclear program. Amano didn’t want to rule out that Iran may be trying to remove evidence from the military site (Parchin).  “We have information that some activity is ongoing there,” Amano said on Friday last week.

The imagery on ISIS’ webpage is unimpressive. So is GoogleEarth imagery from 28 July 2011. The building (at the top of the image above), allegedly containing or having contained the high-explosive test chamber (tests have allegedly been done, according to IAEA “member states” as referred to in Amano’s November 2011 Annex to his Iran report, in the early 2000s) is more than 4 km away from other high-explosive facilities (at the bottom) IAEA inspectors had visited twice in 2005 without any result.

Last modified March 14, 2012.