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Iran Pursued Nuclear Work Before Ending Freeze
Iran pressed forward with some aspects of its nuclear program even before it ended its full compliance with a nuclear freeze agreement brokered by the European Union last year, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 18). Iran resumed uranium conversion at its Isfahan plant this month because it “needs to work out bugs in their conversion process,” said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even while uranium-enrichment activities were suspended under the Paris Agreement, “there was massive activity to fix the failures” at Isfahan, said a non-Western intelligence expert. Iran’s strategy all along has been to avoid nuclear work at times when it was not technologically ready to pursue it, then force a crisis when the time came to operate particular equipment, the expert said. Tehran over the last two years has worked to postpone U.N. Security Council referral while suspending some nuclear efforts to focus “all our capabilities on other activities,” former top Iranian security official Hassan Rohani told the Kayhan newspaper in July. “In reality, we have used the time to alleviate many of our shortcomings,” Rohani said. He added that Iran has developed its uranium conversion capability in piecemeal fashion in order to avoid scrutiny. Iran now has “a significant number of manufactured centrifuges ready for use,” Rohani said. Another expert, however, said the EU pact had prevented Iran from operating enrichment centrifuges, a key technology in any nuclear program. A recently leaked U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran is 10 years away from producing weapon-grade uranium is “a judgment of the Iranian centrifuge program,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “They have not demonstrated that they can pull this thing together,” he said. “On conversion one can argue that the Iranians have made progress,” Albright said. “On centrifuges, they haven’t been able to operate this 164-centrifuge cascade [at the Natanz facility]. Until they do, they don’t have a program” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 18). Tehran is also pursuing a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program while international focus has remained on its uranium enrichment activities, an Iranian exile group claimed today. A recent nuclear committee meeting at Iran’s Supreme National Security Council featured several Iranian officials lauding progress made on developing Iran’s heavy-water reactor at Arak, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran. “During this session, then Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani expressed his appreciation to Hassan Rohani for deceiving the [International Atomic Energy Agency] for the past 22 months, and diverting the attention of the international bodies away from the Arak site,” said the organization’s leader in Germany, Masomeh Bolurchi, citing “sources within the clerical regime.” “Shamkhani reiterated that under no circumstances would this project be prevented. He assessed that progress in building this site was a major achievement of the regime in the nuclear field,” Bolurchi said. The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadheh, said during the same meeting “that unlike the Natanz site, where progress has stalled, the IAEA has not intervened to stop the advancement of this project,” Bolurchi said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Aug. 19). The organization also announced yesterday that Iran has manufactured thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges, the Associated Press reported. Hossein Abedini, a member of the group’s foreign affairs committee, urged, France, Germany and the United Kingdom to take a harder line with Tehran. “If we do not want a terrorist regime obtaining nuclear weapons, the policy of appeasement must be abandoned,” he said (Associated Press/National Council of Resistance of Iran, Aug. 18). Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that Tehran has no interest in developing nuclear weapons, Reuters reported. “[Western officials] talk as if Iran seeks nuclear weapons and that they oppose it,” Khamenei said. “That is lie and they know it. They use it to deceive their own public opinion.” “There’s no talk about nuclear weapons in Iran. We don’t want nuclear weapons,” he said (Reuters, Aug. 19).
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