Iran intends to enrich uranium at its Qum facility using a new model of advanced centrifuge, one of the country's top nuclear officials said in remarks published today (see GSN, Oct. 5).
(Oct. 6) -
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi, shown in August, yesterday dismissed suspicions about his nation's nuclear intentions (Atta Kenare/Getty Images).
Iran's disclosure of the unfinished site last month heightened Western suspicions that the Middle Eastern state's uranium enrichment program is geared toward generating nuclear-weapon material. Tehran contends that its nuclear program is strictly civilian in nature, and the government has repeatedly refused to consider halting the effort in exchange for political and economic benefits.
"We have put our effort on research and development of new machines in the past two or three months so that we would be able to produce machines with high efficiency and completely indigenous," Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said, according to Reuters.
"We are hopeful of using a new generation of centrifuges at the Fordu site," Salehi told the Kayhan, referring to the Qum facility.
The new machines could be two to three times faster than Iran's existing P-1 centrifuges, which at times have been forced off-line by overheating or vibrations (Hashem Kalantari, Reuters, Oct. 6).
One high-level British official yesterday questioned why U.N. officials are not scheduled to visit the Qum site until later this month to ensure that its activities have no military component, the Financial Times reported.
"It is important that [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors are given access to Qum immediately," the official said. "We regret that Iran is delaying this until Oct. 25. We see no reason for a delay. What possible reason can there be for it?" (Blitz/Dombey, Financial Times, Oct. 6)
The Qum facility is probably overseen by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, an entity capable of acquiring uranium enrichment equipment in secret, Time magazine reported (Robert Baer, Time, Oct. 6).
Meanwhile, a British diplomat called for the swift removal of Iranian low-enriched uranium slated for refinement in other countries as part of a tentative deal reached last week by delegates from Iran, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany.
"We don't think it can be taken out gradually," the official said. "The stock of LEU could be put in a container and shipped out at once" (Blitz/Dombey, Financial Times).
Russia yesterday indicated it could work with France, the United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog to enrich the material under last week's agreement.
"A formula involving the IAEA, Russia, the United States and France has been developed to assist the production of fuel for the research reactor with the use of Iranian low-enriched uranium and the delivery of this fuel to Iran," Interfax quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.
The Tehran facility would "soon spend its fuel and need a replacement," he said. "This is an absolutely legitimate reactor. It is fully controlled by the IAEA and produces isotopes for the medical industry."
"As it needs to replace the fuel, Iran has addressed the IAEA as it should," Lavrov said (Interfax, Oct. 5).
"A meeting of experts will be held in the near future in order to implement that plan," he added, according to the Associated Press (Associated Press/Google News, Oct. 5).
The U.N. nuclear watchdog's findings on an alleged Iranian nuclear-weapon program "could be consistent" with a U.S. intelligence determination that Tehran had suspended its formal weaponization effort in 2003, former U.S. intelligence official Greg Thielmann told the Christian Science Monitor.
Designing and assembling a missile-ready nuclear warhead would pose a difficult task for Iran, noted Theilmann, now an analyst at the Arms Control Association.
"If it were easy, handing someone the design of a warhead would be tantamount to giving them a nuclear capability. That's not the case," he said (Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 5).
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi yesterday brushed off the leaked IAEA analysis, contending that agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei had vouched for Tehran's peaceful atomic ambitions, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
ElBaradei said Sunday that his agency had no "concrete" evidence that Iran is currently working to develop a nuclear weapon (Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 5).
Iran would maintain its "positive approach" in future discussions with world powers, Qashqavi added.
"We think it is constructive because the fact is that the negotiations are going forward," Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying. "Its continuation shows that there is material to talk about in the future. We see no reason to be pessimistic."
"There is no military diversion in our nuclear activities. How can we prove the nonexistence of something?" the official asked. "Such issue cannot be proved. There is no nuclear weapon" in Iran (Farhad Pouladi, Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Oct. 5).
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday praised last week's multilateral negotiation session as a "worthwhile meeting," but warned that Tehran must take additional steps to prove its peaceful intentions.
"As [President Barack Obama] has said and I and others have also made clear, this is not by any means a stopping point. There is much more to be done. We expect much more," Clinton said.
"On balance, what came out of the meeting in Geneva was positive," she added.
Addressing whether Iran is making sincere effort to resolve the nuclear dispute, Clinton said, "We don't know yet. We don't know."
"I think the jury's out," Defense Secretary Robert Gates added (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Oct. 6).
Elsewhere, Iran's nuclear energy chief yesterday boasted about his country's nuclear capabilities.
"We can enrich uranium, we can process uranium, we can produce fuel rods, we can mine uranium, we can deal with spent fuel, which proves we have a full fuel cycle," Salehi said yesterday, according to RIA Novosti (RIA Novosti I, Oct. 5).
Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant is expected within days to enter its final testing phase, he added (RIA Novosti II, Oct. 5).