Posted on 02/23/2003 3:29:00 PM PST by HAL9000
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 ? International inspectors visiting Iran this week were shown a network of sophisticated machinery to enrich uranium, spurring concerns that Iran is making headway in its suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, Western officials and international diplomats said today.
The site in question is near the city of Natanz and was visited on Friday by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who went to Iran to assess the status of its nuclear program. It was the first time that inspectors had visited the installation.
During the visit to the Natanz site, inspectors found that it included a small network of centrifuges for enriching uranium. The inspectors also learned that Iran had components to make a significant number of additional centrifuges.
American officials believe Natanz is part of a long suspected nuclear weapons program, an Iranian project that American intelligence believes has benefited from Pakistani assistance and that is far more advanced than the effort by Iraq.
The officials say Iran's goal is to mine or purchase uranium, process the ore and enrich it to a purity suitable for making weapons -- a process that would give Iran a largely indigenous capability to make nuclear weapons.
Iran insists that its aim is to make fuel for a civilian nuclear power program, and it maintains that it is opening its plant in Natanz to the atomic energy agency to demonstrate its peaceful intentions.
The new information on Iran's program comes at an awkward time for the Bush administration, which is making final military preparations for a potential American-led invasion to topple the government of Saddam Hussein, an action justified partly on grounds that Iraq is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Noting that North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs are far ahead of Iraq's, critics of the Bush administration have contended that it has focused too much on a lesser proliferation problem. Administration officials contend that it is important to act before Iraq becomes a nuclear power and say the United States is trying to devise strategies to try to head off North Korea's and Iran's weapons programs.
Dr. ElBaradei, who had planned to visit Iranian sites for three days, cut short his visit to Iran and left today. Two senior officials from the atomic energy agency plan to continue their work in Iran for several days.
The site near Natanz has long been of concern to American intelligence agencies, which had concluded that Iran was building a large gas centrifuge plant there to enrich uranium.
The plant under construction there has thick concrete walls and is being built underground, an apparent precaution against a military attack. After the work on the plant was disclosed by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Dr. ElBaradei asked that it be included in his visit to Iran.
The agency also pushed for the visit because of Iran's announcement in September that it was proceeding with an ambitious nuclear power program, one that is planned to give it an indigenous ability to make and reprocess its own fuel. One objective of Dr. ElBaradei's visit was to ask Iran to adopt an additional protocol that would provide the agency with significantly greater access to sites in Iran and information about its nuclear program.
American and foreign intelligence services believe Iran's program would work as follows: Iran would mine natural uranium at domestic sites or buy it abroad. The uranium would then be taken to a facility at Isfahan, where it would be converted into uranium hexafluoride, a gas.
The fuel would then be taken either to the centrifuge facility at Natanz or, perhaps, to some covert centrifuge plant. The progress that Iran has made in centrifuge technology, as documented by the inspectors, reinforces concerns that Iran is moving forward in this major area.
Iran says Natanz will be used to produce low-enriched uranium for civilian power plants that it has yet to build. The plant that Russians are building at Bushehr would not need low-enriched uranium from Natanz because Russia is supplying the fuel.
Iran also says the Natanz facility will be under international safeguards, which means there will be monitoring equipment and regular inspections to make sure that no enriched uranium is diverted.
But American and British intelligence officials have several concerns. One is that if Iran is able to build a civilian plant in Natanz, it can develop a clandestine nuclear enrichment plant elsewhere. Another is that Iran might somehow divert material from Natanz and take it to a secret centrifuge plant for enrichment to weapons-grade material.
Still another concern is that Iran will complete the Natanz plant under international inspection but then withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which it is legally allowed to do with three months' notice. It could then reconfigure the installation to make weapons-grade uranium. A rule of thumb is that it takes 1,000 centrifuges of the type Iran is using to make a bomb's worth of fissile material per year.
An urgent question is whether Iran has run some uranium hexafluoride through the small network of centrifuges at Natanz. That would produce small amounts of low-enriched uranium but would be a violation of Iran's obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Those obligations require that the production of nuclear material be reported.
Asked to comment on the centrifuges observed at Natanz, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency declined to respond.
"Iran will attempt to justify Natanz as part of its civilian nuclear power program, but it is actually an effort to develop a nuclear weapons breakout capability," said Gary Samore, director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former expert on proliferation on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council.
"It makes no technical sense for Iran to do this for civilian purposes because Russia has agreed to provide lifetime fuel services for Iran's only nuclear power plant under construction, the one at Bushehr," Mr. Samore added. "The Iranians will argue that they have plans to buy an additional four or five plants from Russia. But it would make more economic and technical sense for Russia to provide the fuel for those plants."
Natanz is just one Iranian plant that is of concern. According to American intelligence, Iran has been building a plant near Arak in west-central Iran to produce heavy water, which can be used to make plutonium. Iran has yet to build a reactor that could use the heavy water.
Earlier this week, the Iranian resistance group asserted that research and testing on centrifuge technology was being carried out at a front company near Tehran called the Kola Electric Company. Iran says the company is a watch factory.
Here is the Speigel report via Babelfish translation -
The UN weapon supervisors are alarmed: With a control attendance in Iran they discovered special centrifuges for the enrichment of Uranium. They are afraid that Iran of the atom bomb is closer as so far accepted - much more near anyhow than the Iraq. US president George W. Bush comes again into explanation emergency.
Hamburg - the coworkers of the international atomic energy authority (IAEO) entered the underground plant with the thick concrete walls and were not astonished not badly: They saw equal a whole net of highly developed and one on the other co-ordinated machines, which serve the enrichment of Uranium. While their Iran attendance under the guidance of IAEO boss visited Mohamed aluminium-Baradei the inspectors the plant in Natanz, which wanted to have taken up it expressly to their attendance program, after an Iranian group of oppositions them had referred there to activities.
Western diplomats showed up anxiously over the large progress, which Iran makes with its nuclear weapon program, whose it is suspected. There after information the "New York Times" are an important number of centrifuges. American experts mean, who contribute production plant in Natanz to a nuclear weapon program, which operates the Iranian government owing to support of Pakistan, and which is developed already many further as in the Iraq.
American government representatives assume that the enriched Uranium is intended for the assembly of bombs or rockets. The Iranian side however insists on using the material for the civilian use of the nuclear energy. A proof for the fact finally is that one led the weapon inspectors voluntarily after Natanz. In Natanz is planned, only weakly enriched Uranium to produce for use in atomic power plants, which are however not yet built.
The realizations from Iran again get US president to George W. Bush in trouble: Why focuses its government so much on Iraq, while the atomic danger and the danger of the spreading of nuclear material, which proceeds from Iran, from North Korea or from Pakistan, are obviously far larger?
The Iranian president Mohammed Chatami insured the IAEO director, Teheran was ready with the inspection of his atomic plants for a serious co-operation. In a conversation with aluminium-Baradei Chatami protested the peaceful purpose of the Iranian nuclear projects again. It persisted however in the inalienable right of its country to use nuclear technology.
The government in Teheran is obviously ready, a supplementary protocol for the nuclear weapon check contract signs, which permits undeclared UN controls of the atomic plants. That communicated aluminium-Baradei in Teheran.
The Americans remain nevertheless sceptically. Even if the plant in Natanz with monitors and regular controls should be examined, they fear that the knowledge, which is won there to other one, new laboratories will transfer could. Or that parts of the produced material could secretly be brought from Natanz into other production plants.
The US secret service assumes, which will diminish or abroad will buy Iran Uranium in the own country. The raw material was transformed in a plant into Isfahan into Uranium hexafluoride, improved a gas of this again by means of the centrifuges in Natanz or another, place secretly held.
Aluminium-Baradei left Iran after two days, will be IAEO coworkers however altogether seven days in the country and inspections of the plants in Arak, Isfahan and in the port Buschir will prepare. In Buschir the Russians build an atomic plant, which they will supply allegedly once also easily enriched Uranium.
But, still, better than nothing.
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