Nuclear Sites
7th of Tir Industries (Seventh of Tir, Hafte Tir or Haftom e Tir Industries)
7th of Tir Industries (Seventh of Tir, Hafte Tir or Haftom e Tir Industries)
Seventh of Tir Industries is a DIO entity, which prior to the 2003 suspension, had responsibility for manufacturing several critical P1 centrifuge components. IAEA safeguards reports have not referred to this facility by name. The company takes its name from an important date on the Iranian calendar--the 7th of Tir--on which a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Republic Party on June 28, 1981, killing more than seventy officials. A number of Iranian buildings or places now bear the name.
We do not know whether 7th of Tir continues to be involved in the production of centrifuge components. IIran suspended its centrifuge manufacturing efforts for a time between late 2003 (when it signed but did not ratify the Additional Protocol) and early February 2006, when it notified the IAEA that both its voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol and its suspension of enrichment activity was over. Most information in the public domain regarding Iran’s centrifuge production and manufacturing reflects the period prior to its suspension of centrifuge R&D.
Centrifuge components were manufactured in a relatively small, unidentified facility within 7th of Tir. Under contract, DIO specialists made about twenty critical rotating components of the P1 centrifuge rotor. According to Vienna-based diplomats present at technical briefings by IAEA officials, this facility was originally contracted to make 10,000 sets of these centrifuge components, but had not finished making all of them prior to the suspension. To prevent IAEA monitoring what is a sensitive military site, Iran moved key centrifuge manufacturing equipment and components to Natanz and other AEOI sites.
This site manufactured one of the P1 centrifuge’s most sensitive parts, its bellows—a thin-walled cylindrical part—made from maraging steel. Iran secretly purchased 67 tonnes of this super strong steel in the United Kingdom, enough for approximately 100,000 bellows. Each centrifuge requires three bellows, giving Iran approximately enough steel for some 33,000 centrifuges. Iran may have purchased such a large quantity at one time, fearing that it would become only harder to procure should its centrifuge research and development became public. Apparently Iran was not able to buy the steel in tubes, which is the normal starting point for making a hollow bellows, so it bought metal rods.
Maraging steel is a sensitive commodity, whose purchase is controlled by suppliers. Iran may have found it easier to obtain if asking for rods. But the rod shape complicates the production of bellows. Iranian technicians reportedly had to first use a hot lance to pierce the rod and then cut out the center into a tube. This tube is then thinned to a wall thickness of only one millimeter on a specialized, precision flow-forming machine. Iran obtained this machine from the now defunct German firm Leifeld in 1985 and later obtained several more from this and anther firm. The location of these flow-forming machines is unknown, more than one of which can be used to make bellows.
Annex 1 of UN Security Council Resolution 1747 (2007) states that the facility is controlled by the Ammunition and Metallurgy Industries group (AMIG), which is in turn owned by the Defense Industries Organization (DIO). UN Resolution 1737 (2006) states that 7th of Tir is “widely recognized as being directly involved in the nuclear program.”
A website advertising this firm’s civilian goods can be found here.
site imagery
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Date: Sep 08, 2004
Photo Type: Satellite 
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