Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based umbrella opposition group, said Tehran has decided to incorporate seven existing security organizations into one giant service, the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

"Its formation marks an unprecedented transformation for the regime's intelligence and suppressive apparatus," Rajavi said last week in Brussels.

While Iran announced this summer it would update its spy service, the regime is planning changes it won't reveal, Rajavi claims.

The new service will act as the regime's "main security force" and be directly controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his special secretary, Mullah Hejazi, she said.

"In this respect, it will not even be dependent on the president or (the Parliament)," Rajavi said.

"The new organization has a security-intelligence mandate on the one hand, and a military and operational nature on the other, which provides it with covert and paramilitary arms," she said, adding that the regime has launched accompanying "secret purges" within the Intelligence Ministry affecting "hundreds of intelligence directors and veteran agents."

"Therefore, these changes will render the regime even more militarized under Khamenei's hegemony."

Rajavi said the massive changes are done out of fear that the anti-regime protests that have gripped the country after the June presidential protests could be returning in added strength.

Critics say the elections, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerge winning, were rigged. Tehran cracked down violently on the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took the streets all over the country in the weeks after the vote. Thousands of regime opponents were arrested. The West harshly criticized Iran for the violence.

The NCRI has in the past unveiled allegedly secret acts by the Iranian regime, relying on sources inside the country. Some of those allegations have proven true, while others haven't.

The group scored a major success when it disclosed the existence of two secret nuclear facilities in Iran -- the Natanz enrichment plant and a reactor in Arak.

The NCRI is an umbrella organization representing the People's Mujahedin of Iran, which Tehran and the United States list as a terror organization. It was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah but was squashed by the mullah regime that took power in 1979. It remains one of the main opposition groups to the current regime in Tehran. Most of the PMOI members live in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where they were disarmed by U.S. troops in 2003. The European Union removed the group from its terrorist list in January after Britain had done so last year.

related report
Iran defiant on nuclear as Obama warns of 'consequences'
Tehran (AFP) Nov 17, 2009 - Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium despite a wrist slap by the UN nuclear watchdog, as US President Barack Obama warned of "consequences" Tuesday if Tehran refused to come clean on its atomic programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised suspicions on Monday that Iran could be hiding more atomic facilities and complained that it was not fully in compliance with its nuclear obligations.

It also demanded further information about the purpose of a previously secret nuclear site which when disclosed in September triggered outrage in the West.

Tehran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, dismissed the constant stream of IAEA reports as "repetitive and tedious" and said Iran would continue uranium enrichment.

"Iran will continue to exercise its right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, including enrichment," he said in reaction to the IAEA report.

In the report, the IAEA said it had been told by Iran in a letter that the new site near the Shiite holy city of Qom should be operational in 2011, heightening concerns Tehran is edging closer to developing a nuclear bomb.

"Iran's declaration of the new facility reduces the level of confidence in the absence of other nuclear facilities under construction and gives rise to questions about whether there were any other nuclear facilities in Iran which (have) not been declared to the agency," it said.

The report came as world powers await a response from Iran to an IAEA brokered deal to ship Iran's low-enriched uranium stock out of the country.

Enrichment lies at the centre of fears about Iran's nuclear programme as the process, which makes nuclear fuel, can also be used to make atomic bombs.

Iran vehemently denies seeking a bomb, insisting it only wants enrichment for peaceful purposes and to make fuel for power plants although its first and much-delayed plant, which is being built by Russians, is yet to come on line.

Despite three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to halt enrichment, Iran insists it has a right to the sensitive work as a signatory to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Iran has been enriching uranium for several years at a plant in the central city of Natanz, and maintains the newly unveiled second enrichment plant near Qom was a back-up unit should Natanz be bombed.

The United States and Iran's archfoe Israel have never ruled out a military option to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear drive.

In the wake of the latest IAEA report, US President Obama warned in Beijing on Tuesday of "consequences" if Iran failed to be more transparent on its atomic programme.

"Iran has an opportunity to present and demonstrate its peaceful intentions but if it fails to take this opportunity, there will be consequences," Obama said after talks with Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

"On this point our two nations and (other global powers) are unified," said Obama, who has been pursuing a stick-and-carrot approach on Iran, offering engagement at the same time as threatening sanctions.

UN Security Council permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany seek a negotiated end to Iran's nuclear standoff.

China and Russia, which have close energy and trade ties with Iran, have in past been reluctant to impose tougher sanctions on the Islamic republic.

But in recent weeks Obama has won strong backing from Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, who said on Sunday that Tehran risked sanctions, possibly on its petrol imports, if the nuclear crisis continued.

However Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday talks with Tehran have still not failed.

"I would say that it is premature to say that these efforts have not been crowned with success," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow.

Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi boasted on Tuesday that Tehran can fight any sanctions, expected largely to target its petrol imports, by hiking domestic production by 14 million litres per day to 58.5 million litres with immediate effect.

"This symbolic move... is to show that they (Western powers) can not use this (petrol) as a leverage against the Islamic republic," Mirkazemi said.

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