In a move that surprises absolutely no one, Iran's leader Khamenei says his country will not stop enriching uranium. Ostensibly, the purpose behind snubbing the UN and earlier agreements to suspend operations at the enrichment plant is to prevent 'becoming dependent' on western uranium sources to keep Iranian power plants operating.
TEHRAN, Iran -
Iran does not intend to build nuclear weapons, but it will continue to enrich uranium because it does not want to be dependent on others for its nuclear fuel needs, the country's supreme ruler said Friday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshippers at Tehran University that Western allegations his country is secretly trying to make weapons are "a propaganda trick to deceive their own public opinion."
Were that the sum of the information, it would be an open question as to whether or not the UN and/or other nations could, or even should, do any more than watch. There is, however, more to the story.
Iran is building secret nuclear components, says rebel group
Ian Traynor
Friday August 19, 2005
The Guardian
Iranian opposition activists said yesterday that Tehran was rushing to build nuclear components in breach of its commitments to the UN.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq guerrilla movement, which is classified as a terrorist organisation in Europe and the US, said the Iranian authorities were covertly building and concealing thousands of centrifuge rigs used to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel or weapons.
Admittedly, this is from the Guardian, and I have some reservations about their credibility. Also, as the article points out, the NCRI is listed as a 'terrorist group' both in the US and elsewhere. Too, the NCRI has apparently said lots of things about Iran and its nuclear policies/capabilities...
but some of those things have been confirmed.
... three years ago it [NCRI] was the first to disclose secret Iranian centrifuge operations in Natanz. Those allegations turned out to be largely true and triggered the international crisis over Iran's nuclear activities that has been running for two years.
Having perhaps learned something from Saddam Hussein's 12 year long shell game with UN inspectors... we have this:
As far as the UN inspectors are aware, the Iranians have less than 200 assembled centrifuges at Natanz.
but we also have this:
In London yesterday the Iranian activists said Tehran has been fooling the UN and the EU by secretly constructing some 4,000 centrifuges while pursuing negotiations.
The centrifuges were said to be hidden at military and Iranian revolutionary guard facilities, off limits to the UN.
Earlier this month a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hosein Mousavian, said on television that Tehran had exploited the two years of negotiations with the EU to refine some of its nuclear activities at Natanz and the uranium conversion centre at Isfahan.
Not to worry, the UN watchdogs are on the job, hurrying to allay suspicion.
VIENNA (AFP) - The UN nuclear agency has concluded that highly enriched uranium particles found in
Iran were from imported equipment and not from Iran's own activities, diplomats said.
As always, the devil is in the details.
But the diplomat said the results of tests on cases of low enriched uranium (LEU) contamination, which is below weapons-grade and are also being examined by the IAEA, were "murky" and that the "LEU issue will probably never be solved."
Another diplomat said the inability to resolve the LEU question meant that the investigation's results "don't prove Iran's story is true. They prove it is plausible."
Too, the IAEA (the UN's Atomic Energy group) isn't quite willing to say,,, well,,, anything substantive.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBarradei said on August 11 that while "all declared (nuclear) material in Iran is under verifiction . . . we still are not in a position to say that there is no undeclared materials or activities in Iran."
... I wonder if ElBarradei is familiar with the word 'duh'?
Other sources note that Iran apparently feels like it's holding a very good hand in this latest round of thermonuclear poker.
For their part, Iran's leaders seem to sense their advantages. In recent weeks, they have made clear they believe they have plenty of leverage and are less vulnerable to economic pressures from the outside. The country's new, hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently said "no economic or political incentive can dissuade us from getting peaceful nuclear energy."
A State Department official said the Bush administration has noted Iran's "new defiance" but believes it is symptomatic of "a new overconfidence by the Iranian regime in its level of international support."
I wonder if [German Chancellor] Schroeder, trying to make sure the Iranians believe no one is really serious about the whole idea, has anything to do with that?
A diplomatic effort to contain Iran's nuclear program — led by Britain, Germany and France and supported by the U.S. — hit a serious snag two weeks ago, when Iran rejected a package of political and economic incentives offered in return for abandoning its nuclear-enrichment program. Iran then resumed work at a uranium-conversion plant in Isfahan — a step that could assist in making nuclear weapons, though Iran says it seeks only civilian nuclear power.
One suspects that 'hit a serious snag' is world-government-speak for Iran telling the Euros, in almost exactly so many words, to stuff their proposal.
