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Iran Allegedly Smuggling Steel for Nuclear Program
Iranian front companies are importing extra-durable steel for Tehran’s nuclear program, an exiled Iranian opposition group said yesterday (see GSN, July 28). “At present, maraging steel is being smuggled to Iran illegally from other countries,” said Mohammed Mohaddessin, head of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He said some of the steel came from Malaysia through the United Arab Emirates. Maraging steel, which can withstand extreme temperatures and pressure, is used in uranium enrichment centrifuges, the Associated Press reported. International Atomic Energy Agency experts “will review the claims to see if there’s anything to them,” said agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. Secretly importing maraging steel — a product subject to nuclear export controls — would indicate that Iran “is still violating its treaty obligations, and that the nuclear black market is alive and well,” said Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation director for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Sophie Nicholson, Associated Press/IranFocus.com, July 28). The United States yesterday warned Iran not to resume sensitive nuclear work, Reuters reported. “Iran made some commitments to suspend their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. We expect them to abide by that commitment,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “If Iran is going to violate their agreements, then we would obviously be looking at discussing with (the) Europeans, who have also committed to doing so, looking at going to the (U.N.) Security Council,” McClellan said (Reuters, July 28). Meanwhile, U.S. officials have discovered no evidence that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, as some of the former hostages have charged, the New York Times reported today. The conclusion was based on detailed photo analysis by the CIA, officials said. Evidence that Ahmadinejad was one of the crueler captors, as alleged, “would enormously complicate” diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Tehran, a senior Bush administration official said. However, “it would be more than poor taste to contradict the hostages in public,” a State Department official said. “I think the administration wants this to go away; it’s an embarrassment,” said William Daugherty, one of the former hostages who made the allegations. “I have heard absolutely nothing from the administration, either through the media or personally, about this case,” Daugherty said. He and other former hostages were “surprised and disappointed,” he added (Joel Brinkley, New York Times, July 29). The White House yesterday announced that the investigation was continuing, AP reported. “I don’t think it should surprise anyone given the nature of the regime in Iran that he might have been involved in these kind of activities,” McClellan said. “We know he was a leader of the student movement that organized the attack on the embassy and the taking of the American hostages,” McClellan said. “However, we are still looking into whether or not he was actually one of the hostage-takers. That is something we continue to look in to” (Nedra Pickler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 28).
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