Global Security Newswire

Iran's state-owned automotive company has begun efforts to acquire large amounts of carbon fiber that some diplomats fear could be diverted for use in the nation's uranium enrichment program, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, March 11).

Following orders from Iran's supreme national security council, which supervises the Iranian nuclear program, the head of the firm Iran Khodro asked "a limited number of senior company executives" earlier this year to import the material "as soon as possible," said a diplomat from an International Atomic Energy Agency member nation. The effort would constitute "a massive-scale procurement" of the light-weight, but strong, material, the diplomat added. A second diplomat from another IAEA member state confirmed the assertion.

The company would use some of the carbon fiber for a new type of fuel tank, the diplomats said, but Iran has used carbon fiber in the past to build rotors for three experimental enrichment centrifuge models (see GSN, May 23, 2008). The United States and other Western powers have expressed concern that Iran could use the enrichment process to generate a key nuclear-weapon ingredient, but Tehran has insisted the program would only produce nuclear power plant fuel.

Iran Khodro head Manouchehr Manteqi denied pursuing any carbon fiber acquisition: "Reports that we are after carbon fiber are wrong.

Iran's experimental IR-2, IR-3 and IR-4 centrifuges run between two and three times faster than its 1970s-era P-1 centrifuges, which currently comprise the bulk of Tehran's uranium enrichment capability, according to IAEA officials and other experts.

A current U.N. ban on any sales of carbon fiber to Iran would force the country to acquire the material illicitly through third parties rather than directly from producers in Asia, Europe or the United States. It was uncertain where Tehran acquired the fiber it used to build the experimental centrifuges.

Iran could use the same type of carbon fiber to build components for advanced centrifuges and natural gas fuel tanks, said Zsolt Rumy, head of U.S. carbon fiber producer Zoltek (George Jahn, Associated Press/Google News, March 11).

By reporting Tuesday that Iran did not have any weapon-grade uranium, U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair sought to defuse fears that Tehran was close to acquiring a nuclear bomb, one nonproliferation specialist said.

"Last week, there was a (U.S. intelligence) statement that Iran had produced enough low-enriched uranium that it could produce a nuclear weapon at some point in the near-term future (see GSN, March 2)," said Shannon Kile at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"The clarification that is being made was to point out that, of course, low-enriched uranium is used for nuclear reactors; it is not used for weapons purposes. The point that came across very clearly was the U.S. intelligence community does not believe Iran has made a decision to produce highly enriched uranium -- that is to say, weapon-grade fissile material -- and that there is no evidence that Iran has restarted its nuclear weaponization program, which the (2007) National Intelligence Estimate believes stopped sometime in the autumn of 2003," Kile told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

"This is very much consistent with what the intelligence community was saying during the Bush administration. And the statements that were made (on March 10) were very consistent with the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which was basically stating that Iran is probably looking to keep open the option of developing a nuclear weapon should it decide to do so at some later date, but it hasn't taken that decision," he said.

To convert its uranium to weapon-grade material, Iran would have to reveal its weapon ambitions to the world by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and banning IAEA inspectors from its nuclear sites, Kile noted.

"Quite frankly, I can't imagine that Iran would be able get away with that. The international community would react quite quickly and probably with military measures," he said (Ron Synovitz, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 11).

Meanwhile, former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi announced his candidacy Tuesday in his country's presidential election, the Washington Post reported.

Mousavi, who has expressed support for Iran's nuclear efforts, served as prime minister during the presidency of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei is now Iran's supreme leader and has the final say on all of the country's political decisions.

The election is scheduled for June (Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, March 11).