Iranian President Suggests Nuclear Advances
Iran may be developing more sophisticated nuclear technology that would enable it to significantly accelerate its uranium enrichment capability, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, April 14).
In an announcement last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Tehran had reached an enrichment milestone by concentrating a small amount of uranium to the levels needed for nuclear reactor fuel. He also said the nation was “presently conducting research” on a more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuge, known as the P-2, which could quadruple the production capacity of the nation’s current centrifuges.
That claim has drawn the attention of officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been investigating Iran’s nuclear program for the past three years. Ahmadinejad’s assertion contradicts earlier descriptions submitted to the agency claiming that research into P-2 centrifuges was virtually dormant.
The president’s claim was “the first time I’ve ever heard the Iranians admit” to pursuing the more efficient technology, said U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph. Iran “has never come clean on this program, and now its president is talking about it,” he added.
If Iran has advanced work on the better centrifuge, Western intelligence agencies might need to adjust their estimates of how soon Iran could potentially produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
“This is a much better machine,” said one European diplomat. U.S. intelligence services have judged that Iran could produce enough material for a weapon somewhere between 2010 and 2015 with its less sophisticated enrichment technology, the Times reported.
IAEA officials have persistently questioned Iran’s previous claims about P-2 research in part because its black market supplier delivered complete P-2 centrifuges to Libya and North Korea, according to the Times.
Former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the black market network who has been questioned by Pakistani officials since being placed under house arrest, has provided little information on how much P-2 information he delivered to Iran.
His reluctance led to his dismissal as head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, according to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. After learning that Khan planned a secretive visit to Iran in 2001, Musharraf questioned him about the purpose of the trip, but Khan refused to provide details.
“I said, ‘What the hell do you mean? You want to keep a secret from me?’” Musharraf said in an interview with Times reporters for a documentary called “Nuclear Jihad” that is scheduled to air tonight on Discovery Times.
“So these are the things which led me to very concrete suspicions,” Musharraf said, “and we removed him.”
Khan’s involvement has fueled U.S. charges that Iran has sought uranium enrichment technology for weapons purposes rather than for power reactor fuel.
“A.Q. Khan was not in the business of civil nuclear power development,” said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the documentary (Broad/Sanger, New York Times, April 17).
New Construction
Meanwhile, recent satellite imagery appears to have shown that Iran has made significant progress in defending its uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz from attack by burying them under several meters of dirt and concrete, according to a report released Friday by the Institute for Science and International Security.
A comparison of site photos taken since September 2002 show that the floor of the facility is about 25 meters below ground level and the roofs to the various chambers of the site are about 17 meters above the bottom, leaving them 8 meters below ground level. The images indicate that layers of dirt, cement and concrete have been laid on top of the submerged structures, the report says.
In addition, workers appear to be expanding or reinforcing the nation’s uranium conversion site at Isfahan, the report says. A satellite photo taken March 26 shows evidence of a new tunnel entrance to the site.
“This new tunnel entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or the further expansion of the existing one,” the report says.
“Iran is taking extraordinary precautions to try to protect its nuclear assets,” said institute President David Albright (Mark Heinrich, Reuters/Washington Times, April 17).
Albright also cautioned that IAEA inspectors are losing ground in their efforts to investigate Iran’s uranium enrichment equipment. Since Iran ended its suspension of its enrichment activities earlier this year, it has also ceased transparency measures that exceeded the minimum required by its nuclear safeguards agreement with the agency.
“As a result, the IAEA is slowly losing knowledge regarding the use and location of many of these items,” the report says (ISIS report, April 14).
Smuggling Efforts Continue
While Iran received much of its nuclear technology from the now-closed Khan network, it continues to pursue WMD and conventional weapons technology from other parts of the world, including the United States, the Washington Post reported today.
Arms dealers have attempted to ship nuclear-weapon applicable technology as well as aerospace equipment from the United States to Iran, according to U.S. officials. The nuclear equipment included machines for assessing the strength of steel, and the aerospace technology included components for missiles and fighter jets.
“Iran’s weapons acquisition program is becoming more organized,” said Stephen Bogni, acting chief of the Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The smuggling efforts have often involved attempts to ship equipment that is legal to own in the United States but illegal to export to Iran, officials said.
“Most of the material the Iranians are seeking is aging technology, but it’s technology that could still hurt the United States and its allies today,” said Serge Duarte, acting special agent in charge of ICE investigations in San Diego (John Pomfret, Washington Post, April 17).
Lawmakers Debate Diplomatic Strategy
In Washington, some U.S. senators have urged the Bush administration to engage Iran directly in a diplomatic effort to resolve the nuclear crisis, while others have supported the Bush strategy of letting France, Germany and the United Kingdom lead the way.
“We’ve been basically a nonparticipant,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “I don’t think we’ve been muscular enough, if you will, on the diplomatic front” (Associated Press I, April 17).
“I happen to believe that you need direct talks,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you agree with them. It doesn’t mean you support them. It doesn’t mean you have formal diplomatic relations. But there’s an option.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) agreed that direct U.S.-Iranian talks might help.
“I think that would be useful,” he told ABC’s “This Week” yesterday. “The Iranians are part of the energy picture,” he said. “We need to talk about that” (Hope Yen, Associated Press II/Boston Globe, April 17).
Lugar’s Republican colleague Mitch McConnell (Ky.) disagreed however.
“This is a situation that cries out for U.N. Security Council action and for multilateral sanctions that actually mean something,” he told Fox News yesterday. “Nobody seriously thinks there is a unilateral solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. It has to be done on a multilateral basis” (Associated Press I).
Military Consequence
In Tehran, Iranian officials warned that any military actions taken against the nation or its nuclear facilities would have grave consequences for the attackers.
“You can start a war, but it won’t be you who finishes it,” Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Friday. Specifically, he said U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Iraq and in the region were “vulnerable” (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, April 16).
Iran’s response to an attack could come from a legion of suicide bombers, the London Sunday Times reported. As many as 40,000 trained bombers have been assembled in special battalions, according to the Times.
Enrolled at a Tehran recruiting site recently, battalion volunteers were asked to indicate a preference for attacking U.S. targets in Iraq or Israeli targets, the Times reported (London Sunday Times, April 16).
In an announcement last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Tehran had reached an enrichment milestone by concentrating a small amount of uranium to the levels needed for nuclear reactor fuel. He also said the nation was “presently conducting research” on a more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuge, known as the P-2, which could quadruple the production capacity of the nation’s current centrifuges.
That claim has drawn the attention of officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been investigating Iran’s nuclear program for the past three years. Ahmadinejad’s assertion contradicts earlier descriptions submitted to the agency claiming that research into P-2 centrifuges was virtually dormant.
The president’s claim was “the first time I’ve ever heard the Iranians admit” to pursuing the more efficient technology, said U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph. Iran “has never come clean on this program, and now its president is talking about it,” he added.
If Iran has advanced work on the better centrifuge, Western intelligence agencies might need to adjust their estimates of how soon Iran could potentially produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
“This is a much better machine,” said one European diplomat. U.S. intelligence services have judged that Iran could produce enough material for a weapon somewhere between 2010 and 2015 with its less sophisticated enrichment technology, the Times reported.
IAEA officials have persistently questioned Iran’s previous claims about P-2 research in part because its black market supplier delivered complete P-2 centrifuges to Libya and North Korea, according to the Times.
Former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the black market network who has been questioned by Pakistani officials since being placed under house arrest, has provided little information on how much P-2 information he delivered to Iran.
His reluctance led to his dismissal as head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, according to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. After learning that Khan planned a secretive visit to Iran in 2001, Musharraf questioned him about the purpose of the trip, but Khan refused to provide details.
“I said, ‘What the hell do you mean? You want to keep a secret from me?’” Musharraf said in an interview with Times reporters for a documentary called “Nuclear Jihad” that is scheduled to air tonight on Discovery Times.
“So these are the things which led me to very concrete suspicions,” Musharraf said, “and we removed him.”
Khan’s involvement has fueled U.S. charges that Iran has sought uranium enrichment technology for weapons purposes rather than for power reactor fuel.
“A.Q. Khan was not in the business of civil nuclear power development,” said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the documentary (Broad/Sanger, New York Times, April 17).
New Construction
Meanwhile, recent satellite imagery appears to have shown that Iran has made significant progress in defending its uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz from attack by burying them under several meters of dirt and concrete, according to a report released Friday by the Institute for Science and International Security.
A comparison of site photos taken since September 2002 show that the floor of the facility is about 25 meters below ground level and the roofs to the various chambers of the site are about 17 meters above the bottom, leaving them 8 meters below ground level. The images indicate that layers of dirt, cement and concrete have been laid on top of the submerged structures, the report says.
In addition, workers appear to be expanding or reinforcing the nation’s uranium conversion site at Isfahan, the report says. A satellite photo taken March 26 shows evidence of a new tunnel entrance to the site.
“This new tunnel entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or the further expansion of the existing one,” the report says.
“Iran is taking extraordinary precautions to try to protect its nuclear assets,” said institute President David Albright (Mark Heinrich, Reuters/Washington Times, April 17).
Albright also cautioned that IAEA inspectors are losing ground in their efforts to investigate Iran’s uranium enrichment equipment. Since Iran ended its suspension of its enrichment activities earlier this year, it has also ceased transparency measures that exceeded the minimum required by its nuclear safeguards agreement with the agency.
“As a result, the IAEA is slowly losing knowledge regarding the use and location of many of these items,” the report says (ISIS report, April 14).
Smuggling Efforts Continue
While Iran received much of its nuclear technology from the now-closed Khan network, it continues to pursue WMD and conventional weapons technology from other parts of the world, including the United States, the Washington Post reported today.
Arms dealers have attempted to ship nuclear-weapon applicable technology as well as aerospace equipment from the United States to Iran, according to U.S. officials. The nuclear equipment included machines for assessing the strength of steel, and the aerospace technology included components for missiles and fighter jets.
“Iran’s weapons acquisition program is becoming more organized,” said Stephen Bogni, acting chief of the Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The smuggling efforts have often involved attempts to ship equipment that is legal to own in the United States but illegal to export to Iran, officials said.
“Most of the material the Iranians are seeking is aging technology, but it’s technology that could still hurt the United States and its allies today,” said Serge Duarte, acting special agent in charge of ICE investigations in San Diego (John Pomfret, Washington Post, April 17).
Lawmakers Debate Diplomatic Strategy
In Washington, some U.S. senators have urged the Bush administration to engage Iran directly in a diplomatic effort to resolve the nuclear crisis, while others have supported the Bush strategy of letting France, Germany and the United Kingdom lead the way.
“We’ve been basically a nonparticipant,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “I don’t think we’ve been muscular enough, if you will, on the diplomatic front” (Associated Press I, April 17).
“I happen to believe that you need direct talks,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you agree with them. It doesn’t mean you support them. It doesn’t mean you have formal diplomatic relations. But there’s an option.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) agreed that direct U.S.-Iranian talks might help.
“I think that would be useful,” he told ABC’s “This Week” yesterday. “The Iranians are part of the energy picture,” he said. “We need to talk about that” (Hope Yen, Associated Press II/Boston Globe, April 17).
Lugar’s Republican colleague Mitch McConnell (Ky.) disagreed however.
“This is a situation that cries out for U.N. Security Council action and for multilateral sanctions that actually mean something,” he told Fox News yesterday. “Nobody seriously thinks there is a unilateral solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. It has to be done on a multilateral basis” (Associated Press I).
Military Consequence
In Tehran, Iranian officials warned that any military actions taken against the nation or its nuclear facilities would have grave consequences for the attackers.
“You can start a war, but it won’t be you who finishes it,” Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Friday. Specifically, he said U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Iraq and in the region were “vulnerable” (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, April 16).
Iran’s response to an attack could come from a legion of suicide bombers, the London Sunday Times reported. As many as 40,000 trained bombers have been assembled in special battalions, according to the Times.
Enrolled at a Tehran recruiting site recently, battalion volunteers were asked to indicate a preference for attacking U.S. targets in Iraq or Israeli targets, the Times reported (London Sunday Times, April 16).
posted by Marko at 4/17/2006 05:14:00 PM
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