Iran Denies Nuclear Slowdown; West Seeks Answers

An Iranian lawmaker denied that the nation has slowed the installation of centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment facility, but Western officials and analysts confirmed the development and offered a number of possible explanations, news agencies reported today (see GSN, July 9).

International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday described a “marked slowdown” to the growth of Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz.  He based his assessment on recent visits to the site by agency inspectors.

However, Hamid-Reza Haji-Babaei, spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and national security commission, said the nation has not eased the pace of centrifuge installation, Deutsche Press-Agentur reported.  The most recent IAEA report circulated last month indicated that Iran has installed more than 1,600 centrifuges (Deutsche Press-Agentur/Jurnalo.com, July 10).

Still, U.S. and European officials agreed with ElBaradei’s view and suggested that Iran might be dealing with unexpected technical difficulties.

“They've committed down a road to expand as quickly as possible,” said one senior European official. “But Iran won't be the first to discover that it does happen to be rocket science, and development has its peaks and troughs.”

One private analyst speculated that Tehran could be shifting its priorities.

“Iran may be trying to learn how to operate centrifuges better, so they produce more enriched uranium instead of trying to add more centrifuges,” said David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security.

A U.S. official played down the importance of the quantity of working centrifuges at Natanz.

“As Iran still appears to be working to master centrifuge technology, it is not the numbers of centrifuges that matter.  What matters is that all centrifuge activity be suspended immediately, as the U.N. Security Council has required,” said State Department spokesman Jim Kelman.

A second analyst suggested that Iran has deliberately slowed its activities to encourage diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis.

“We've been getting a lot of signals from Iran that they want to talk," said Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress.  "Pay less attention to the rantings of [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and pay more attention to the comments of [lead nuclear envoy Ali] Larijani. All of Larijani's body language and statements indicate that they want to make a deal. There have been more signals over the past couple of months than in the past year. They also want to talk to us about Iraq” (Robin Wright, Washington Post, July 10).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.