Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- Iran is likely to continue developing its illicit nuclear-weapon programs despite sustained political and economic pressure from the international community, a senior U.S. Energy Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 7).

Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman addressed Tehran's contested atomic program and the nuclear-weapon activities of North Korea during an event at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

"In respect to either or both of them, if they can have their cake and eat it too, they will," he said. "I do not expect the government of Iran or the government of North Korea to do anything other than keep pressing ahead until such a point that they find sufficient pain" in the form of international isolation.

History "indicates that you can buy time [but] I don't think you can necessarily buy a conversion on the Road to Damascus," he told the audience, making a metaphorical reference to a radical change of heart that would lead Tehran or Pyongyang to suddenly abandon their nuclear ambitions.

Poneman offered his comments one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report asserting Tehran has undermined investigations into the country's nuclear operations.

The United States and other Western powers have long suspected that the Middle East nation's uranium enrichment activities are conducted with an eye toward weapons production. Iran says its program is intended only for civilian energy purposes.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report states that Iran recently barred two experienced inspectors from observing the nation's nuclear program. The pair claimed they had discovered undisclosed atomic work, but Tehran said they were banned because their findings were erroneous.

Overall, Iran has "not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," the report says.

Iran has also stockpiled 2,803 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and 22 kilograms, or 49 pounds, of material enriched to 20 percent, according to the report, a quarterly document prepared for the agency's 35-nation governing board focused on the nation's observance of monitoring actions. Observers worry Tehran's enrichment operations could put it on the road to refining material to weapon-grade levels.

Poneman said the international nuclear standoff is more than a political problem, as Tehran has often contended, because "I don't think they're coming to this court of world opinion with clean hands."

"The fundamental problem is that Iran is engaged in a series of actions that are extremely consistent with a nuclear weapons program but not extremely consistent with a nuclear energy program," Poneman said.

He noted that the Middle East nation concealed the existence of a secret nuclear facility at Natanz for nearly 20 years before it was uncovered in 2002. Construction of another clandestine facility was discovered near the city of Qum last year (see GSN, Nov. 17).

Iran is also "messing around with a heavy-water facility which looks like it's well-suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium," Poneman said, referring to a heavy-water plant at Arak.

Tehran to date has shrugged off four U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions aimed at curbing its uranium enrichment effort, along with unilateral actions by the United States and other nations. The newly minted IAEA report shows that Iran's defiance of the global community's calls to come clean about its nuclear activities is "getting worse not better," according to Poneman.

The document also confirms that Tehran is enriching more material "every single day," bringing the Middle East nation closer to possessing nuclear weapons, he said.

"Everything we're doing is trying to slow that day from coming but I think that is the course that it is trending toward and we're just going to have to ... do what we can to try to slow it up," he said. "There is no magic bullet that I see that's going to suddenly get them to reverse course at this point, given the political nature of that regime."

The Energy Department's No. 2 said he is generally in favor of engagement as a strategy and "finding as many channels that are fruitful."

"I don't think it's useful to have a lot of cul-de-sacs where you have people just talking and providing an excuse to avoid compliance with international obligations," Poneman said.