Iran admits keeping nuclear program secret Miami Herald/AP (registration may be required for miami.com articles) ALI AKBAR DAREINI Posted on Sun, Mar. 06, 2005
Iran confirmed Sunday that it initially developed its nuclear program in secret, going to the black market for material, and blaming its discretion on the U.S. sanctions and European restrictions that denied Iran access to advanced civilian nuclear technology.
Iran now openly admits that it has already achieved proficiency in the full range of activities involved in enriching uranium - a technology that can be used to produce fuel for nuclear reactors or an atomic bomb.
Washington has accused Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build a nuclear bomb. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear program is merely geared towards generating electricity.
"True. There was secrecy," former president Hashemi Rafsanjani said Sunday. "But secrecy was necessary to buy equipment for a peaceful nuclear program. If sanctions had not been imposed on us, we would have declared everything publicly, but we had problems buying metal. Nobody sold us anything in the market," he said. [...] He said Iran would never agree to a permanent halt on enriching uranium, a technology he says Tehran is entitled to under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities last year to create confidence and avoid U.N. Security Council sanctions. But Tehran says maintaining the voluntary freeze depends on progress in ongoing talks with Britain, Germany and France, who are negotiating on behalf of the European Union. "Definitely we can't stop our nuclear program and won't stop it. You can't take technology away from a country already possessing it," Rafsanjani said....
Iran: Nuclear sanctions to cause unrest
By Ali Akbar Darein
Portsmouth Herald/AP
Sun. March 6, 2005
Iran said Saturday it will never agree to permanently stop making nuclear fuel and warned that a more unstable Middle East would result from trying to haul Tehran before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. Any effort by Washington to bring Tehran’s suspended uranium enrichment program under the Security Council scrutiny is a dangerous path, warned Hasan Rowhani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator.
Rowhani, speaking during a two-day international conference on nuclear technology, also confirmed that Iran was building a tunnel next to a nuclear facility in Isfahan without first informing the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. "Constructing a tunnel is not a nuclear activity," Rowhani said. "It’s not clear for us if we had to inform the IAEA of the tunnel construction at all." Rowhani said the tunnel, which is under a mountain, will be used to store unspecified equipment. Asked if the tunnel was meant to protect nuclear equipment against airstrikes, he added: "Airstrikes won’t be able to do anything against it."
Last month, President Bush said fears that Washington was preparing an attack were "ridiculous," but he nonetheless said "all options are on the table."....
NEWS: Scott Ritter says US attack on Iran planned for June
Written by Mark Jensen
Saturday, 19 February 2005
Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. [...]
Will the U.S. attack Iran this June?
-- Julia Scott
[14:01 EST, Feb. 24, 2005]
In the midst of ongoing speculation about the possibility of a U.S. bombardment of Iranian nuclear targets, the blogosphere has been buzzing over comments made by former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter at an antiwar event in Olympia, WA, on Feb. 18. Ritter, an outspoken opponent of the war on Iraq, surprised the crowd with details about a conversation he said he'd had with a source connected to the Bush administration back in October 2004. He claimed that he had been told, in confidence, that President Bush had signed off on military plans calling for the aerial bombardment of Iran in June 2005.
Reached by Salon for comment, Ritter confirmed his earlier statement. He would not identify his source other than to say that he or she was affiliated with the Bush administration, and had sought him out for his "expert advice on Iraq." [...] Hersh also went on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart and suggested that the administration may be planning an attack sooner than it will admit. "The plan is to get three or four dozen targets, hit them by air this summer, maybe, or whenever, and the thinking is, if they can show that the theocracy isn't that powerful, the people will rise up," Hersh told Stewart.
According to Ritter, the June date is based on Israel's eagerness to launch a preemptive attack on Iran before the country can make large strides in its nuclear development....
The instant pretext for an attack is that Iran has been decidedly unresponsive to IAEA (which it has, to some extent, but that would seem to be primarily because they think the US is going to attack anyway, so why should they go along with IAEA demands?); the longterm pretext, as noted in the Salon piece, is that the administration thinks it will produce/facilitate "regime change." Which has famously worked so very well in Iraq.
I keep trying to figure out on what planet an unsupported and unjustified aerial bombardment of a civilian population will produce regime change. Not this one, certainly. It wouldn't have worked in Iraq without the follow-up ground invasion, which we certainly can't do now. (I can just imagine us trying to occupy not one, not two, but three middle-eastern countries with our thoroughly overstressed military. Supply lines a nightmare, guerillas in an essentially unbroken line through the region ... that would just be ever so much fun!)
The really fun part, of course, will be watching our own economy do a fast crash and burn. Given unstable supplies from Iraq, what would almost certainly become unstable supplies from Iran, and other fun in the Middle East, the price of oil would soar ever upward once again. Given almost no reason to hold it down, that would produce near-instant recession here, and possibly a full-blown depression, depending on government's response.
(Purely a side note: the post-processing editing of AP wire service articles is truly fascinating to watch. How on earth you get articles as different as those first two cited out of the same initial AP feed, I have no idea.)
Posted by iain at March 07, 2005 02:12 PM
