Election Bolsters Iran’s Nuclear Stance, Expert Says

The Iranian electorate gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a broad mandate to maintain his hard-line stance on the nation’s nuclear program last Friday by supporting parliamentary candidates likely to support that policy, Bloomberg reported (see GSN, March 19).

Roughly 70 percent of voters supported strong Islamists who have backed Ahmadinejad in his standoff with Western nations over Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which could be used to produce a nuclear weapon ingredient.  Iran insists the program is intended only for nuclear power production.

A faction of political moderates opposing Ahmadinejad won less than one-fourth of the vote after Iran’s ruling clerics banned most of its candidates from running.

“The nuclear rhetoric could get worse now,” said Meir Javedanfar, co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran:  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran.  “The election victory may bring tougher U.N. sanctions, making Iran’s economic situation all the more difficult” (Bentley/Nasseri, Bloomberg, March 17).

Meanwhile, a Western intelligence official revealed documents to Jane’s International Defense Review indicating that Iran has developed detonation technology it could use in building a nuclear weapon, the magazine reported in its most recent issue.

The documents, which were verified by several independent experts in Vienna, assert that a branch of the Iranian Defense Ministry has successfully tested multipoint initiation technology on a hemispherical implosion detonator.  Related developments took place within the Iranian Atomic Energy Authority around the same time.

The detonation technology could be hidden within programs to develop conventional shaped-charge weapons, but Iran judged it to be “good enough” to use in a nuclear weapon following tests in 2000, the documents indicate.

Iran has made significant progress in developing non-nuclear technologies it could use to militarize its nuclear capabilities, the documents show.  They also challenge a U.S. intelligence assessment’s conclusion that Iran suspended its development of nuclear weapons technologies in 2003 (Mark Harrington, Jane’s International Defense Review, April 2008).

In Oman, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday that it remains uncertain whether Iran has resumed nuclear weapons work despite the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate’s determination that it had halted development five years ago, the Associated Press reported.

“What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003.  We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted,” Cheney said.

“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he said.  “They’ve been working at it for years.”

Cheney added that he has not adopted a harsher tone toward Iran’s nuclear activities.

“I’ve been pretty consistent over time about Iran,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ve ratcheted up the rhetoric.  I felt strongly for a long time, and a lot of us have, that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons” (Deb Riechmann, Associated Press/Washington Post, March 19).

U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday reiterated his call for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program while defending Tehran’s right to develop civilian nuclear energy capabilities, Voice of America reported.

“I believe in civilian nuclear power.  Iran is a sovereign country and they should have it.  The problem is we just don’t trust the government because they haven’t been forthcoming about their enrichment of fuels to go into the reactor.  Therefore Russia’s offer to provide fuel on a contractual basis, and provide fuel on a consistent basis, would help solve the problem,” Bush said.

“The Iranian leaders, in their desire to enrich uranium, have isolated a great country.  There’s a way forward.  The Iranian leaders know there’s a way forward, and that is to verifiably suspend your enrichment and you can have new relationships with people (countries) in the U.N. Security Council, for example,” Bush said (Voice of America, March 20).

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