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How much of Iran’s nuclear program is hidden in tunnels?

Iran hides nuclear secrets in web of tunnels The Australian  January 07, 2010  ?WASHINGTON: Iran has hidden a large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country, shielding its infrastructure from military attack in warrens of dense rock while obscuring the scale of its nuclear effort, according to reports yesterday.

The effort to hide its capability complicated the West’s military and geopolitical calculus and helped shield Tehran from attack, US reports said.The Obama administration is pressing for strong and immediate new sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program. Analysts told The New York Times that Iran’s tunnelling – which Tehran calls a strategy of “passive defence” – was a crucial factor behind the push for non-military solutions to the issue.The report said US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates had discounted the possibility of a military strike against Iran, in the belief it would only slow Tehran’s nuclear program by one to three years while driving the project further underground……………………

US government and private experts told the paper there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tunnels in Iran, and that the lines separating their use could be fuzzy. Companies owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, for example, built civilian as well as military tunnels.

No one in the West knows how much, or exactly what part of Iran’s nuclear program lies hidden in the tunnels.

Iran hides nuclear secrets in web of tunnels | The Australian

January 7, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons