Global Security Newswire

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said multiple countries had offered to sell enriched uranium fuel to his nation under a tentative agreement reached with world powers last week, Reuters reported (see GSN, Oct. 6).

"There have been some proposals by individual countries and groups of countries. We are ready to hold talks with anyone interested. Our experts will soon start talks with those sellers," Ahmadinejad said, according to Iranian state media.

Tehran agreed last week to send roughly 80 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to France and Russia for further refinement, according to Western diplomats. The material would be enriched to a level still unsuitable for weapons and then returned to Iran, where it would fuel a small, internationally supervised research reactor in Tehran.

The agreement -- reached last Thursday in talks between Iran, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany -- was expected to address U.S. and European concerns that Tehran could possess enough low-enriched uranium to power a nuclear weapon if it further enriched the material outside international nonproliferation safeguards. The Middle Eastern state has maintained that its nuclear program is strictly aimed at generating electricity (see related GSN story, today).

Ahmadinejad, though, appeared to hint that Iran was looking to purchase a separate supply of enriched uranium for the research reactor.

"Representatives of some countries have said that France is ready to provide nuclear fuel for the Tehran reactor ... they (France) should officially propose it, then we will review it," Ahmadinejad said, noting that his nation had not yet completed any purchasing arrangement (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Oct. 7).

The International Atomic Energy Agency called on Washington and Moscow to provide uranium for the research reactor, one Iranian lawmaker said yesterday.

"According to its commitment, the agency has to supply Iran’s required (nuclear) fuel, thus it has requested the U.S. and Russia to supply this fuel to Iran," the Tehran Times quoted Iranian parliament member Alaeddin Boroujerdi as saying (Tehran Times, Oct. 7).

Meanwhile, Russia yesterday refuted a British news report that Israel had supplied Moscow with the identities of Russian scientists providing nuclear-warhead assistance to Iran, Agence France-Presse reported.

According to the London Sunday Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supplied the names during "a short, tense meeting" last month with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"At the moment I do not know of any secret services or other agencies having given us information about our companies or individuals," Russian national security council head Nikolai Patrushev said yesterday, according to Interfax.

"If [the Israelis] have such information, we will of course pay attention to it. But we do not have such information" he said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Oct. 6).

Meanwhile, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee called yesterday for an independent review of a U.S. intelligence assertion that Iran's formal nuclear-weapon activities have been suspended since 2003 (see GSN, Sept. 17).

Representative Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) referred in a press release to Iran's recent disclosure of an unfinished uranium enrichment site and an undisclosed IAEA assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities as evidence that the Gulf state intends to build a nuclear bomb.

"Despite this new information, the U.S. intelligence community is sticking by the widely discredited conclusion of its November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003," he said in the statement. "Our intelligence analysts seem to be stuck in an analytical rut and unwilling to alter their corporate line on Iran’s nuclear program despite a preponderance of evidence and the fact that America’s allies strongly disagree with their assessment."

"I propose this problem be addressed by establishing a 'red team' of independent experts to challenge the career intelligence analysts’ assessment of the Iranian nuclear program. The red team would be a diverse group drawn from organizations such as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institute, and Harvard’s JFK School. It would be granted full security clearances and issue a report with its conclusions" he said (U.S. Representative Peter Hoekstra release, Oct. 6).

Elsewhere, the Defense Department awarded a $51.9 million contract Friday for preparing U.S. B-2 stealth bombers to carry a 30,000-pound conventional bunker-buster bombs considered capable of destroying hardened nuclear facilities in Iran, ABC News reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 3).

In a request to Congress this summer, the Pentagon indicated it wanted to buy four ground-piercing Massive Ordnance Penetrators at a cost of $19.4 million; speed up "development and testing" of the weapon for $28.3 million; and speed up modification of B-2 bombers for the weapon for $21 million (Jonathan Karl, ABC News, Oct. 6).

Iran today alleged that the United States had a hand in the case of an Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared during a visit to Saudi Arabia in May, the Associated Press reported.

Shaham Amiri studied nuclear medicine at a university in Tehran, Iranian state media quoted the scientist's family members as saying.

"We've obtained documents about U.S. involvement over Shahram Amiri's disappearance," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said. "We hold Saudi Arabia responsible for Shahram Amiri's situation and consider the U.S. to be involved in his arrest."

Saudi Arabia has not responded to Iranian inquiries on Amiri's status, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said this week.

Mottaki sent U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a formal grievance referring to Amiri and three other missing Iranians, some of whom were suspected of spying on Iran's nuclear program for Western powers, the newspaper Asharq Al-Aswat reported last week. The grievance did not refer to the missing Iranians' nuclear expertise, Qashqavi said (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Google News, Oct. 7).