Inspectors in Iran Examine Machines to Enrich Uranium

ASHINGTON, 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 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 have visited the installation.

During the visit to the Natanz site inspectors found that it includes a small network of centrifuges for enriching uranium. The inspectors also learned that Iran has components to make a significant number of additional centrifuges.

American officials believe that Natanz is part of a long suspected nuclear weapons program, an Iranian project that American intelligence believes has benefited from assistance from Pakistan and that is far more advanced than the effort mounted by Iraq.

They 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 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. Bush administration officials contend that it is important to act before Iraq becomes a nuclear power and say that the United States is trying to devise different strategies to try to head off North Korea's and Iran's nuclear 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 the next several days.

The site near Natanz has long been of concern to American intelligence agencies, which had concluded that Iran is building a large gas centrifuge plant there to enrich uranium.

The plant under construction there is large, has thick concrete walls and is being built underground, an apparent precaution against a military attack. After the work on the plant was publicly 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 hexofloride, 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 nuclear power plants that it has yet to build. The plant that Russians are building at Bushehr would not need low-enriched uranium from Natanz since Russia is supplying the fuel under its agreement with Iran.

Iran also says the Natanz facility will be under international safeguards, which means there will monitoring equipment to check enrichment levels and regular inspections to make sure that no enriched uranium is diverted.

But American and British intelligence have several concerns. One is that if Iran is able to build a civilian plant in Natanz it is able to develop a clandestine nuclear enrichment plant elsewhere.

Another is that Iran might somehow be able to divert material from Natanz and take it to a secret centrifuge plant for further enrichment to weapons-grade material.

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 already run some uranium hexofloride 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 safeguards and inspections of 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 of the Iranian plants that is of concern. According to American intelligence, Iran has also been building a plant near Arak in central Iran to produce heavy water. Heavy water can be used in nuclear plants 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.

1992. Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, former first deputy director of Biopreparat (the civilian arm of the Soviet Union's biological warfare program) defects to the United States (where he changes his name to Ken Alibek). He confirms many of the West's suspicions of Russia's offensive biological program, including the fact that Russia has used its Smallpox stock to make weapons and has used recombinant DNA techniques to produce “super bugs”. One such research project included efforts to combine Ebola with Smallpox. Many of the hybrids are designed to defeat western vaccines and anti-biotics. Other revelations by Alibek include the fact that Moscow has secretly produced tons of Anthrax, Smallpox, and Plague germs meant for use against the United States. He also discloses that Biopreparat operated over 40 bio-war research and production sites spread across Russia and Kazakhstan which employed as many as 30,000 scientists and technicians. He also points out that Sverdlosk was the Soviets busiest Anthrax production facility, producing it in “industrial quantities.” While working as a researcher at the Stepnogorsk facility, he developed Anthrax strain No. 836. This strain was strain was three times as deadly in both dry and liquid forms than the strains responsible for the Sverdlosk accident, and required fewer spores for infection.

1997. Andrew Weber, a U.S. diplomat involved in arranging inspections and scientific exchanges between Russia and the U.S., talks to two scientists from the Oblensk State Research Center of Applied Microbiology while visiting Moscow. He is told that a delegation of Iranians had recently visited the Oblensk and and Vector facilities as well as others. The Iranians were on a recruiting mission, offering $5,000 per month salaries to Russian microbiologist willing to come to work in Iran. Similar delegations from Iraq, Libya and North Korea have visited Russia. Several Russian scientists are known to have accepted these offers. The exact number is not known, but the whereabouts of many former Biopreparat employees is unknown.

Bio-Chemical Weapons & Saddam: A History.

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