Iran is developing nuclear missiles at two sites with a range of 3,000km.

Iran is developing nuclear missiles with a range of 3,000km based on designs handed to the Islamic regime by North Korea, The Telegraph can disclose.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which has previously exposed details of Tehran’s secret uranium enrichment facilities, has shared information on how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are expanding their weapons programmes.

The exiled opposition group says that two sites camouflaged as communication satellite launch facilities have been used to rush the production of nuclear warheads.

They are both under the control of the Organisation for Advanced Defence Research (SPND), the regime’s nuclear weapons arm.

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Credit: Google Earth

“The Iranian mullahs are masters of lies, deception and evasion. For over two decades, they have used negotiations and the West’s leniency as a means to advance their nuclear weapons programme, threatening global peace and stability,” Soona Samsami, a US representative of the NCRI, told The Telegraph.

“Tehran has never been as weak and vulnerable as it is today. The desperate Iranian regime is thus speeding up the development of nuclear weapons.

“Now is the time to hold the regime accountable for internal killings, regional warmongering, and nuclear weapons development,” she added.

At the first site, known as the Shahrud missile site, about 35km from a city of the same name, SPND and IRGC Aerospace Force experts have been working on producing a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted to a Ghaem-100, solid-fuelled rocket with a range of 3,000km.

Missiles with that range would allow Iran to launch nuclear strikes deep into Europe from its territory – as far as the likes Greece, and regional targets such Israel, Tehran’s arch enemy.

There have been at least three successful launches of the rocket, which the NCRI says “enhances the regime’s capability to deploy nuclear weapons”.

The IRGC has also announced plans to test more advanced Ghaem-105 rockets in the coming months.

Previous tests at the site were conducted as satellite launches as the rockets were described as “satellite carriers” to conceal the regime’s alleged nuclear missile programme, the NCRI says.

Satellite images show a large concrete platform from which mobile launch vehicles can fire the rockets skywards.

Nearby, there are clusters of buildings where the research is believed to be used for research purposes.

Credit: Google Earth

A second site, situated around 70km southeast of the city of Semnan, is being used to develop Simorgh missiles, a weapon based on North Korean designs.

The designs are similar to the North Korean UNHA-1, an 18-metre tall rocket, which Pyongyang says is an expendable rocket for carrying equipment into space.

Significant portions of the site are based underground to conceal the work from intelligence satellites capturing images of the area.

To further obscure the military purpose of the Semnan missile site, the regime named it the Imam Khomeini site after Iran’s space organisation and carried out ballistic missile launches under the guise of satellite launches.

The regime has been steadily expanding the site since around 2005, with six new structures emerging on satellite imagery over the past decade.

Images shared by the NCRI show a large section of ground in the northeastern corner of the Semnan site being excavated in 2009. As progress continues, concrete foundations are seen being erected in the hole.

Images from 2012 of the same section of the base show the structure entirely covered with dirt.

According to the NCRI, activities by the SPND, including its geophysics department, which specialises in monitoring underground explosions from nuclear warhead productions, have intensified.

Journalists were once permitted to visit the site, where they witnessed IRGC soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, but had their photographs confiscated by regime enforcers, with only a handful of selected images released.

Both sites have been designated military facilities and follow strict security protocols to avoid unwanted guests discovering what work is being undertaken at them.

Workers at the sites arrive at an external perimeter gate, often dozens of kilometres from the main facilities, in their private cars from Tehran and other cities.

From the checkpoint, the employees are brought in by bus by the IRGC to ensure maximum security.

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Iran's covert nuclear agency found operating out of top space program launch sites

A covert agency within Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, tasked with the development of Iran’s nuclear program, has been found to be operating out of top sites used by Iran’s space program.

Iran has hidden elements of its nuclear development program under the guise of commercial enterprises, and it has been suspected of using its space program to develop technologies that could be applied to its nuclear weapons program.

Fox News Digital has learned that according to information obtained by sources embedded in the Iranian regime, evidence collected over several months shows that Iran’s chief nuclear development agency, the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, has been operating out two locations previously recognized as space development and launch sites.

Iran Hiding Missile, Drone Programs Under Guise Of Commercial Front To Evade Sanctions

"These reports, compiled from dozens of sources and thoroughly validated, indicate that in recent months, SPND has intensified its efforts to construct nuclear warheads at both the Shahrud and Semnan sites," the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a report exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.

The information was obtained by individuals affiliated with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran and given to the NCRI, an Iranian opposition organization based out of Washington, D.C., and Paris. The NCRI's deputy director of its Washington, D.C., office, Alireza Jafarzadeh, was the first to disclose to the world information about Iran’s covert nuclear program in 2002.

One of the sites, the Shahroud Space Center, which has been suspected of being used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to develop intermediate-range ballistic missiles, is also now reported to have "large-scale" SPND personnel operating out of it – a move Jafarzadeh described as a "significant red flag."

The Shahroud Space Center caught global attention in 2022 when Iran announced it had developed the Ghaem-100 rocket, which could be used to send low-orbit satellites into space, but also as a ballistic missile with a range of nearly 1,400 miles, greater than what was previously achieved with the Qased rocket.

However, according to sources familiar with activity at the Shahroud Space Center "SPND's experts are working on a nuclear warhead for the Ghaem100 solid-fuel missile with a range of more than 3,000 kilometers [more than 1,800 miles] and a mobile launch pad."

The site is under high security and personnel are apparently prohibited from driving on to the complex. Instead, they are required to park at a checkpoint at the entrance to the site, before being transported inside the complex by the IRGC.

"The Ghaem-100 missile, with a mobile launchpad that enhances its military capability, was produced by the IRGC Aerospace Force and copied from North Korean missiles," the NCRI report said. "The production of the Ghaem missile was designed from the very beginning to carry a nuclear warhead. The IRGC Brigadier General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the father of the IRGC's missile program, personally pursued the project."

It is unclear what level of nuclear payload the Ghaem-100 missile would be capable of carrying at the range of 1,800 miles, though this is still shy of the roughly 3,400 miles needed to be classified as an intercontinental missile.

The second site, located in the northern city of Semnan, the Imam Khomeini Spaceport – Iran’s first spaceport – made international headlines just last month when Tehran launched its heaviest-ever rocket into space carrying a payload of roughly 660 pounds, relying on a liquid propellant.

According to the NCRI report, Iran is using this technology to develop liquid-fuel propellants, like the Simorgh rocket with a range of more than 1,800 miles, used for launching heavier satellites into space – but with the capability of carrying nuclear warheads.

Liquid fuel enables a missile to have greater propulsive thrust, power and control. Though it is heavier than solid fuel and requires more complex technologies.

"Creating a Space Command of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force has served to camouflage the development of nuclear warheads under the guise of launching satellites while additionally giving the regime independent communications necessary for guiding the nuclear warheads," Jafarzadeh told Fox News Digital.

The International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this month warned that Iran has developed some 440 pounds of near-weapons grade uranium that has been enriched to the 60% purity threshold – shy of the 90% purity levels needed to develop a nuclear bomb.

Though only some 92 pounds of weapons-grade uranium is reportedly required to create one nuclear bomb, meaning Iran, if it further enriched its uranium, could possess enough material to develop five nuclear bombs.

However, Jafarzadeh warned that the international community needs to be paying attention to Iran’s activities beyond enriching uranium.

"It is naïve to only focus on calculating the amount or purity of enriched uranium without concentrating on the construction of the nuclear bomb or its delivery system," he said. "All are integral components of giving Iran’s mullahs an atomic bomb."

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