Intended recipient of an electron microscope and associated components, technology, software and training, the procurement of which was denied on March 7, 2006, by a member state of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG); activities include materials engineering consulting and metallurgical, physical, chemical, and mechanical testing; has laboratory facilities for metallography, mechanical testing, polymeric material testing, chemical analysis, XRF, heat treatment, non-destructive evaluation, and materials preparation; has an X-ray diffractometer, scanning electron microscopes, and equipment for gas chromatography, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and atomic absorption spectrometry.

Affiliated with Canada's Sutcast Foundry Technologies, Inc.; director of Mechanical and NDT Labs, Sattar Nasiri, allegedly enlisted the aid of Farshid Rohani (management executive at Sutcast) in July 2006 to purchase a magnetostrictive sensor from the Southwest Research Institute in the United States, after the Institute refused to supply the device directly to Nasiri; Nasiri and Rohani were indicted in U.S. federal court in Texas in October 2006 for conspiracy to willfully illegally export U.S. origin commodities without obtaining the required U.S. government authorization; Rohani was sentenced in July 2007 to twelve months imprisonment.

Established in 1983.

Sanctions

Listed by the British government in 2012 as an entity of potential concern for WMD-related procurement, and has had export licenses both granted and denied by that government.