Posted on 02/22/2004 12:45:39 AM PST by yonif
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Ministry acknowledged on Sunday that the Islamic Republic had bought nuclear components from dealers but said it did not know where the parts came from.
Disclosures by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, have in recent weeks opened the lid on a global black market network for sensitive nuclear technology that could be used to make atomic bombs.
Khan has admitted to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"We have bought some things from some dealers but we don't know what the source was or from what country they came from," ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.
"It happens that some of those (dealers) were from some sub-continent countries," Asefi added, stressing that Tehran had informed the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog -- the International Atomic Energy Agency -- about the purchases.
Malaysian police said on Friday that Khan had sold Iran $3 million in centrifuge parts to Iran in the mid-1990s.
But Asefi said Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is geared solely to electricity generation, had "never pursued nuclear weapons and will not do so."
They turned to the black market to buy nuclear technology for legitimate power generation purposes? Of course they know that nobody will believe this.
Since nobody is supposed to believe this story, we can say that Iran is acknowledging its nuclear weapons program and that everybody understands this. Why do you think Iran would do this?
iran is waiting to see which way the wind blows.
this could be the beginning of a very threatening stance, if iran decides to follow the lead of north korea.
but if the wind blows against them, it could turn into a face-saving way to back down.
the ayatollahs are betting on #1. they are hoping for and working towards a power vacuum in pakistan and iraq that they can take advantage of.
watch iran try to drum up and then inflame a civil war between sunnis and shiites in iraq.
<< You would think so, but they say so many stupid things that no one with a sixth grade education would believe, who heck knows. I think, since their main goal is to take over the world, they've seriously lost touch with reality. >>
They do say a lot of things you would think nobody would believe. LOL!
Doesn't this one seem more like a "Wink, wink" sort of thing though? You know -"We bought black market nuclear components, but we don't know who we bought them from, and they were for power plants anyway. Wink, wink."
That's surely true!
yes, a little. i fear it will get worse and even spread to south asia.
the pieces of pakistan are shifting under the surface right now. we have weakened the existing isi-centered power structure. iran is bound to challenge our ability to set up a stable reorganization of power in pakistan, as in iraq.
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