Iran Confirms Start of Work on Atomic Fuel
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – Iranian officials yesterday confirmed that the Islamic republic has already begun the enrichment of uranium into the gas necessary for the production of nuclear fuel.
Speaking to reporters in Vienna, the Iranian vice president, Reza Aghazadeh, announced that attempts to make uranium hexafluoride gas had been successful. On the same day, President Khatami vowed before an Iranian military parade that his country would “continue along our path even if it leads to an end to international supervision.” In the same speech, the Iranian president insisted the nuclear program was for peaceful purposes.
Iran’s disclosure came three days after the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution demanding the country suspend its enrichment activities as the U.N. organization completes its assessment of Iran’s nuclear program to determine whether it is in fact a cover to make weapons.
Last night, NBC News reported that the IAEA’s director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, may have been coaching the Iranians on how to avoid being penalized by the United Nations. The news organization said America had been spying on him and that some American officials now believe he has been providing the country with inappropriate counsel.
While Mr. ElBaradei has pleaded with the Iranians to freeze their enrichment program, he has also rebuffed an American request to add the Iranian facility in Parchin to the list of sites his inspectors must visit in Iran to bring the country back into good standing with the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
A September 15 paper from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said that overhead photographs of the Parchin facility suggest it could be a test site for nuclear weapons.
But the paper’s authors, David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, warned that “the evidence that this site is conducting nuclear-weapons work is ambiguous.”
“Some facilities seem more suited to armaments research or rocket-motor testing. Despite the ambiguity about the purpose of this site, the available evidence appears sufficient to warrant a request for a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency of this site.” In the run-up to the Iraq War, the authors were critical of America’s evidence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Some observers suggested America was prepared to allow Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites yesterday when the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Congress had approved a sale of bunker-buster munitions to Israel.
But Israeli sources tell the New York Sun that the shipments were largely guidance systems that Israel has been purchasing with American credits for many years.
“These purchases are ongoing,” Israeli embassy spokesman David Siegel told the Sun yesterday. “Israel purchases a broad range of military equipment from the United States, this is nothing new.”
A defense industry lobbyist who has served as a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Morris Amitay, told the Sun yesterday that the bunker-buster munitions alone would hardly be evidence that America was planning to al low Israel to strike Iranian facilities. “The Israelis have been making their own navigation systems for bombs for years. It would be a stretch to say that these bombs would specifically be used against a nuclear site,” he said.
Newsweek reported this week that the intelligence community has recently concluded a first strike against Iranian facilities would not set back the program. Israel estimates that Iran could complete its nuclear fuel cycle within the year, giving the country the ability to make material for weapons.
The prospect of an Iranian atomic bomb has divided the president’s advisers. Since 2002, the Pentagon has favored a plan to disregard the 1981 agreement America signed with the Islamic republic codifying the release of American hostages in exchange for an agreement not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.
The Pentagon has favored a plan to get non-lethal aid quietly to Iranian groups arrayed against the government.
The CIA and State Department, however, give this gambit a low chance of success and favor direct and indirect negotiations on a raft of issues with Iran, ranging from its support for terror to its nuclear ambitions. The policies have been deadlocked for two years, with neither regime change nor diplomacy moving forward.
There have been some signs the president may be moving toward a more confrontational policy with Iran. In July, the Voice of America issued an editorial expressing support for Iran’s democratic struggle. Undersecretary of State John Bolton has called for Iran to be diplomatically isolated and for shipments to the country believed to contain equipment or material useable for its nuclear program to be interdicted.
But so far Iran’s defiance of the United Nations has not translated into a plan to aid the Iranian opposition. Tomorrow an international conference aimed at documenting the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses kicks off in Paris without any support from Washington.
The event will be sponsored by the Iranian Action Committee, an umbrella of exiled dissident organizations that includes monarchists, minorities, and members of the Mujahadin e-Khalq, a group listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department.
“We plan on holding a moral court to expose the regime’s crimes,” an organizer of the event, Roxanne Ganji, said. She added that the mock trial has not been coordinated with anyone in the American State Department.
By contrast, when Saddam Hussein was in power, the State Department and other European foreign ministries often funded Iraqi opposition-group conferences to highlight his crimes against humanity.