Other Names: n/a
Location: 36 °15'N 50°01'E. The city of Qazvin is located about 150 km west of Teheran.
Subordinate to: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is reportedly responsible for Iran's WMD programs.
Size: Unknown
Primary Function(s): Pesticide production; reported chemical weapons production

History: The German firm Bayer built a pesticide plantin Qazvin, now suspected of chemical weapons production in the late 1980s. The plant was reportedly completed between November 1987 and January 1988.

Activities: Various sources report that the pesticide plant in Qazvin is capable of producing chemical weapons, specifically nerve gas:

• According to the Iran Brief, the Qazvin plant is widely believed to produce the nerve agent sarin, in addition to agricultural pesticides.
• The Federation of American Scientists reports that Qazvin is the location of one of Iran's major chemical weapons facilities.
• CSIS reports that the true purpose of the pesticide plant in Qazvin is poison gas production that includes organophosphorous compounds, i.e., nerve agents.
• In July 1995, the Iranian opposition paper, Iran Zamin, reported a fire at the Chemical National Koshavarz factory, located in Alborz, an industrial town near Qazvin. The paper claimed that the factory was a chemical weapons production site. It is not clear whether this factory is the suspected poison gas plant located at Qazvin.
• Middle East Defense News claims the plant in Qazvin is capable of formulating sarin from imported precursor chemicals and packaging it into weapons canisters.

Middle East Defense News also details the history of the Qazvin plant, built in 1987 by a consortium that included the German companies Lurgi Metallurgie GmbH, Bayer AG, and BASF (formerly of VEB Bitterfeld), Ciba-Geigy of Switzerland, and an unidentified Yugoslav company. Signed by Iran's state-controlled Nargan Consulting Engineers, the contract stipulated that Iran would use the Qazvin facility to make Amiton, a powerful organophosphorus pesticide classified as a nerve agent by Western governments in the 1950s and withdrawn from the market because of its lethality. (Amiton is a Schedule 2 toxic chemical under the Chemical Weapons Convention.) To handle the deal, Bayer set up a subsidiary in Iran called Bayer-Iran Chemie and began importing equipment from the United States in 1987.

The West German government approved two of four planned production lines: a pesticides "formulation" plant, and a "bottling" plant. The other two segments of the project—a toxic waste disposal unit and a separate factory that could have produced nerve gas precursors—were denied by a decision of the unified German government in May 1992 after opposition members of the Bundestag publicly alleged that the plant would be used for CW production. It is not known whether the companies delivered any of the proscribed equipment during the four years between the completion of the two initial production lines and the May 1992 decision. However, the two installed segments were in operation by the end of the Iran-Iraq War, reportedly synthesizing nerve gas and other CW agents from precursor chemicals imported from West Germany, the United States, and India. Faced with tougher export controls after 1992, Iran began importing nerve gas precursors from Pesticides India, a major subcontractor to the Qazvin project.

Burck and Flowerree cast doubt on the accusations that the plant at Qazvin is manufacturing chemical weapons. Both Bayer and the German Company Lurgi deny that chemical weapons could have been made at the plant, designed to produce dilute organophosphate pesticides. As a formulation plant, it could carry out very little or no chemical synthesis, only mixing.

In August 1995, Mohammad Nabi, the managing director of the Keshavarz chemical plant, located in the "Alborz" industrial city in Qazvin, announced that he rejected foreign media allegations of chemical weapons stocks at the plant. He claimed that the plant manufactured only pesticides and that the existing design and facilities did now allow it to produce chemical weapons.

On 23 June 1996, the Sunday Telegraph reported about a "...secret multi-million-pound deal with the Indian government which will supply banned materials used to manufacture poison gas." Under the deal, India would build a sophisticated chemical plant at Qazvin, which would be used to produce phosphorus pentasulfide, a dual-use chemical that could be used to produce chemical weapons (e.g., VX nerve agent). The deal collapsed after details of the deal were disclosed in The Telegraph.

An earthquake in the northwestern region of Iran in June 2002 may have damaged or destroyed the plant at Qazvin. The IRGC, reportedly responsible for Iran's WMD programs, rushed to Qazvin to assess the damage of the earthquake to strategic facilities in the province. Regular army troops were also sent to help deal with any damage of the CW installations.

Key Sources: Federation of American Scientists, <http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/facility/qazvin.htm>; Giles, "The Islamic Republic of Iran and Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons," p. 96; Cordesman, Iran's Military Forces in Transition: Conventional Threats and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 234; "Japan Hopes to Reverse Trade Nightmare," Iran Brief, Middle East Data Project, Inc.; "Japan Hopes to Reverse Trade Nightmare," Iran Brief, Middle East Data Project, Inc., 2 November 1998; "Plant Director Denies Chemical Weapons Manufacture," IRNA, 6 August 1995; in FBIS Document FTS19950806000254, 6 August 1995; "U.S. Suspects Iranian CW Facility Damaged in Quake," Middle East Newsline, vol. 4, no. 234, 24 June 2002; "Iran's CW Programs," Middle East Defense News (Mednews), Proliferation section, vol.6, no. 14, 19 April 1993.

	Updated September 2003