The UN International Atomic Energy Agency plans to reveal intelligence next week suggesting that Iran has made computer models of a nuclear warhead.
The IAEA will also bare other previously undisclosed details of alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms, diplomats said yesterday.
Other new confidential information that the IAEA plans to share with its 35 board members will include satellite imagery of what it believes is a large steel container used for nuclear-arms-related explosives tests, the diplo-mats said.
The agency has previously listed activities it says indicate possible secret nuclear-weapons work by Iran, which has been under IAEA watch for nearly a decade over suspicions that it might be interested in developing such arms.
But the newest compilation of suspected weapons-related work is signi-ficant in substance and scope.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long insisted that his nation’s nuclear efforts are only for domestic electricity production.
The diplomats say they will reveal suspicions that have not been previously made public and greatly expand on alleged weapons-related experiments that have been published in previous reports on Iran’s nuclear activities.
It also comes as the drumbeat of reports about possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities intensifies.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said yesterday that the international community is closer to pursuing a military rather than diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
The comments, from a known dove, assumed added significance because they followed unsubstantiated reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was seeking his government’s support for a strike against Tehran.
Among other revelations, the previously undisclosed information from the UN will mention intelligence from unnamed member states reporting that a bus-sized steel container, located at Iran’s Parchin military base, is likely being used for nuclear-related high-explosives testing of the kind needed to release an atomic blast.