Another SPND front company unveiled: Milad Darou Noor

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 Dear Redline fans,

 

Do you ever find that life gets in the way and stops you getting on with even the most important things? Well we here at Redline have been away for a little while, but we never wavered in our commitment to uncovering the latest antics of SPND (سپند or sepand), the secretive Iranian defense research organization. That’s right, we’re back in town, and we’ve got some very exciting discoveries to share with you which we think will more than make up for lost time.

 

Stay tuned over the coming weeks to find out what we’ve got in store for you!

 

First up… 

 

Another SPND front company unveiled: Milad Darou Noor

 

We thought we’d start with another dive into one of the multitude of front companies owned or used by SPND, the shadowy Iranian defense research organization responsible for Iran's pre-2003 nuclear weapons program.

 

The company's name is Milad Darou Noor, (شرکت داروسازی میلاد دارو نور), also known as Milad Pharmaceutics. You can visit their website here - or here.

 

From that website, you'd get the impression that Milad Darou Noor is a benevolent, artisanal purveyor of vitamins, insect repellent, and nutritional supplements. There's nice pictures of people climbing mountains and of athletes sweating. They're even looking for foreign sales agents!

 

Here's why any foreign company would be stupid to take them up on that offer. Milad Darou Noor is controlled by individuals who belong to SPND and/or to the IRGC. Milad Darou Noor is a commercial spin-off from efforts by Iran's Ministry of Defense (وزارت دفاع و پشتیبانی نیروهای مسلح) to manufacture defensive equipment and antidotes against chemical and biological weapons (CBW). And all of Milad Darou Noor's key officials have dabbled in CBW-related research that veers extremely close to being intended for offensive use, rather than defensive purposes.

 

Here's how the company's connections look like from some parsing of Iranian business records and other information available to Redline:

 

Milad Darou Noor / Milad Pharaceutics SPND sepand front company connections

 

 

First up - we can't help but point out that in classic SPND fashion, Milad Darou Noor has lazily re-used an address off Mirsharifi Street and a phone number (021-22658404) that both belonged to an old SPND associate. In this case, that address and number belonged to Dr Parisa Nasiri (پریسا نصیری, ID: 0061381421), who has been director of several SPND front companies and is married to one of the original AMAD men, Seyyed Borborudi (سیدشمس‌الدین بربرودی). And that address was a step up on the OPSEC ladder from Milad Darou's original Tehran address, which we found in business records That address was at the postcode 1668947861: which is the registered location of - erm - SPND.

 

The directors of Milad Darou Noor are all easily tied to SPND or the IRGC. There's Dr Ali Gharibian (علي غريبيان, national ID 0051332574), a biologist and close associate of SPND (more on that in our next post). Davoud Etesami (داوود  اعتصامی, national ID: 0491717156) is an AMAD metallurgist has published books under the SPND banner. Hosseinali Etehadi (حسین‌علی اتحادی, ID: 0045940576) is a medical professor from the IRGC-owned Baghiatallah Medical Sciences University (دانشگاه علوم پزشكي بقيةالله), and a past employee of the SPND-linked Shahid Meisami Research Centre who's also written books explicitly under the affiliation of SPND. Ali Pourasad (علی پوراسد, ID: 2295925649) is another Shahid Meisami man; Rouhollah Ghalandari (روح اله قلندری, ID: 0450440214) is another IRGC professor at Baghiatallah University.

 

Our very favorite aspect of Milad Darou Noor is that they make a chemical called amyl nitrite, under the brand name NITROMIL. Ostensibly it's to be used as an antidote to cynanide poisoning, but we hear that when things get a bit dull at SPND headquarters, the NITROMILs are a-popping...

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