Newsday November 20, 2002
Worries About Iran; Officials: Nuclear weapons program more advanced than Iraq's
By Knut Royce and Earl Lane. WASHINGTON BUREAU
Washington - While the Bush administration has focused public attention on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, Iran's nuclear weapons program has in recent months begun to appear more worrisome than Iraq's, according to U.S. intelligence.
Administration officials and nuclear proliferation specialists say Iran is trying covertly to produce weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
A U.S. official with access to intelligence reporting on nonproliferation acknowledged in an interview that Iran's nuclear weapons effort is now more developed than Iraq's. The official asked not to be identified.
With no fanfare, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency - now in Baghdad to begin the search for Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons facilities - plans a trip soon to look at nuclear sites in Iran. ElBaradei, said in an interview he hopes to visit sites that may be part of an effort by Iran to acquire a complete nuclear fuel cycle, including what many experts believe will include an ability to produce bomb-grade plutonium.
The U.S. government considers Iran the most active state sponsor of international terrorism, far more than Iraq, and President George W. Bush has included Iran in his "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea.
Iran is developing a medium-range ballistic missile, based on a North Korean design, that would be capable of striking Israel, experts say. While some parts of the Iranian leadership have moderated their anti-Western rhetoric in recent years, key leaders in charge of the military have not and the hard-line Iranian leaders still call for destruction of Israel.
What worries U.S. officials and experts most is Iran's interest in technology for the production of nuclear reactor fuel and the handling of spent fuel. This "fuel cycle" can include reprocessing of the spent fuel to extract weapons-grade plutonium, a step specialists in and outside the U.S. government are convinced the Iranians want to take.
"They [Iran] are pursuing clandestinely through false trading companies and a variety of other means an intensive effort to develop those attributes of the fuel cycle which are necessary" to building nuclear weapons, said John Wolf, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.
ElBaradei said last week that he expects to go to Iran soon and will seek to visit facilities that he said are under construction as part of Iran's fuel cycle program. He declined to give specifics on the sites but said Iranian officials "assured me that whatever they are building there will be declared" to his agency and placed under an inspection regime.
In a little-noted speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference in September, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Iran Atomic Energy Organization, invited "technologically advanced" nations "to participate in my country's ambitious plan for the construction of nuclear power plants and the associated technologies such as fuel cycle, safety and waste management." Aghazadeh said that "complete transparency of my country's nuclear activities is a serious commitment by my government."
But U.S. officials and some independent analysts are skeptical. "I think it's a very dangerous trend," said Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. "I think the Iranians are likely to pursue a nuclear weapons program under the guise of a safeguarded fuel cycle." Samore, who handled nonproliferation matters for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, said such an approach by Iran, unless challenged, could set a precedent in the region that "will guarantee proliferation throughout the area."
An Iranian official in New York denied yesterday that his government has any interest in nuclear weapons. "Our program is for energy and peaceful aims only," said Morteza Ranandi, press attache at Iran's UN mission.
Wolf said in an interview that Iran has been using front companies to pursue technology from suppliers around the world that would be useful in the fabrication and reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Wolf said the purchases include "esoteric technologies which only really make sense as part of a weapons development program." He declined to offer more specifics on the suppliers, but said they "aren't looking carefully at the end users."
The CIA, in a written follow-up to a question during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February, said a chief goal of the Iranian nuclear program "has been the acquisition of a large, heavy-water moderated, natural uranium-fueled reactor and associated facilities suitable for production of weapons-grade plutonium."
Heavy water is water in which both of the molecule's hydrogen atoms have been replaced with the isotope deuterium. It is a key to one type of reactor in which plutonium can be bred from natural uranium. Developing such a reactor would let Iran bypass the need for elaborate facilities to enrich uranium for burning in a standard light-water reactor before the fuel can then be processed to extract plutonium. The CIA said Iran also is pursuing uranium enrichment strategies.
An Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said in August that it had learned from sources within Iran about two secret nuclear sites under construction. One, about 25 miles southeast of the city of Kashan, is to be used for nuclear fuel production, the council said. It said the site includes two large halls 25 feet underground. A facility meant to produce heavy water is along a river near the central Iranian city of Arak, the council said.
Wolf said the State Department's information is consistent with the dissident group's disclosures. "These are two clandestine sites, including one underground," he said.
The administration official familiar with U.S. intelligence reports on nuclear proliferation said other sites in Iran are of interest as well, but he declined to discuss them further.
"There are an enormous number of place names said to be associated with Iran's nuclear ambitions," said John Pike, director of the nonprofit GlobalSecurity.org. But without further non-classified information on them - such as good commercial satellite photography - Pike said, it is impossible for him to assess their importance.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is taking a wait-and-see stance. Mark Gwozdecky, an agency spokesman, said Iran has the right to build facilities for fabricating and processing nuclear fuels as long as it declares their existence at the appropriate time and opens them for inspection. Such facilities are not technically subject to the agency's safeguards and inspection procedures until nuclear materials are introduced into them, Gwozdecky said.
Still, several nuclear experts said there is widespread concern in the nonproliferation community that Iran is seeking to obtain technology that will facilitate a nuclear weapons program.
Iran has been building a conventional light-water nuclear reactor at Bushehr with Russian help and that has been a focus of U.S. concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The United States and Russia have been unable to come to an agreement on allowing the Bushehr reactor to be completed under a "grandfather" clause while requiring Iran to return all spent fuel from the reactor to Russia so it cannot be used for weapons purposes by Tehran. The U.S.-Russian talks foundered after revelations in July that
Russia had plans to provide Tehran with five more reactors.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group, said Iran has repeatedly refused to renounce spent fuel reprocessing as a national goal. He said Tehran seeks a nuclear deterrent as a security guarantee, having seen the world look on passively when Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 and as Hussein used chemical weapons on Iranian troops during the resulting Iran-Iraq war. Clawson said Iran may be trying to build a capacity, within a nominally peaceful nuclear power program, to quickly develop a nuclear weapon if it feels threatened. He said the Bush administration is well aware of the potential danger. "The harder line that you see emerging [by the administration] is in part because of a different evaluation of what threat Iran represents," Clawson said.
Knut Royce is a Newsday special correspondent.
Weapons Fears
Locating the Bushehr nucear reactor in Iran
The two reactor buildings at Bushehr. One is in an advanced stage of completion while the other has remained dormant for some time.
This satellite image, taken March 1, 2001, of the reactor just south of Bushehr, Iran, shows the Iranian nuclear facility. The complex occupies a roughly one-square-mile area, which includes assembly halls, a concrete channel for cooling water that runs from the reactors to the gulf, and the harbor which supports loading and unloading of foreign materials needed for construction and reactor operation.
Weapons Fears
Locating the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran.
The two reactor buildings at Bushehr. One is in an advanced stage of completion while the other has remained dormant for some time.
This satellite image, taken March 1, 2001, of the reactor just south of Bushehr, Iran, shows the Iranian nuclear facility. The complex occupies a roughly ne-square-mile area, which includes assembly halls, a concrete channel for cooling water that runs from the reactors to the gulf, and the harbor which supports loading and unloading of foreign materials needed for construction and reactor operation. Bushehr
GRAPHIC: Space Imaging (Photo by Space Imaging) - Bushehr. Newsday Chart - Weapons Fears -(see end of text).
A 1-meter resolution, satellite image of the Bushehr Reactor which is located approximately 17 kilometers south of the city of Bushehr. There are two reactor buildings at Bushehr; one in an advanced stage of completion, while the other has remained dormant for some time.
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