IAEA Says Iran to Install Thousands of Centrifuges Underground

Iran next month plans to begin installation of thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges in an underground facility, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said today (see GSN, Jan. 25).

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mohamed ElBaradei said, “I understand they are going to build up their 3,000 centrifuge facility … sometime next month,” the Associated Press reported.

Other U.N. officials said Iran has not said officially it would install the 3,000-centrifuge cascade at Natanz but that senior Iranian representatives have indicated that work would proceed next month (George Jahn, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Jan. 26).

Iran insists its nuclear program is for purely peaceful, energy-production purposes, but the United States and other nations suspect that the uranium enrichment effort is part of a weapons program.

The United Nations has demanded Iran halt its enrichment program and imposed sanctions in response to Tehran’s rejection of that order.

ElBaradei also said a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “catastrophic” and galvanize it to make atomic weapons.  While noting that western intelligence pegs Iran just four years from the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, he said the U.N. nuclear watchdog has uncovered no evidence of such aims.

“They have the knowledge; sure they have the knowledge,” he said regarding the Iranian nuclear program.  “Are you going to bomb the knowledge?”

ElBaradei said the Iran issue was not yet a case requiring U.N.-sanctioned force as a final option against a rogue regime.  “In the case of Iran, we are absolutely far from away it,” he said (George Jahn, Associated Press II/MSNBC.com, Jan. 25).

Meanwhile, Tehran has demanded that the IAEA official in charge of inspections in Iran be removed, Reuters reported.

A diplomat said Friday that Iran sent a letter to the agency in Vienna requesting Chris Charlier be removed as Iran section head.  Iran last year had barred the Belgian official from entering the country.

“Both Iran and the (IAEA) are informed that this inspector has passed confidential Iranian nuclear information…to inappropriate countries and their media,” an Iranian diplomat told the IRNA news agency (Mark Heinrich, Reuters, Jan. 26).

The request follow Iran’s ban on 38 IAEA inspectors from Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States.  Those are nations that developed or supported the U.N. sanctions.

The agency has asked that Iran rethink that decision, a spokeswoman said Thursday, according to Agence-France Presse.  Only a “few” of the 38 inspectors “are actually working on Iran, the rest are not,” a diplomatic source said.

Another diplomat said that the nuclear watchdog was “pushing back” as “no country has ever de-designated so many inspectors in one go.

“This is not the type of action that facilitates resolving issues,” the diplomat said on the condition on anonymity (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/The Independent, Jan. 25).

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