The CIA first noticed unusual activity at Iran's Qum site in 2006, but the agency did not confirm until earlier this year that the area was intended to host a uranium enrichment complex, Time magazine reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 7).
(Oct. 8) -
CIA Director Leon Panetta, shown in May. The intelligence agency noticed suspicious activity at a site in Iran years before it was identified as an unfinished uranium enrichment facility (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images).
Leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom and France announced their knowledge of the site in a dramatic statement late last month, days after Iran had reported the facility's existence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (see GSN, Sept. 25). Washington and its allies seized on Iran's delay in disclosing the facility as evidence that the Middle Eastern state hopes to secretly enrich uranium to weapon-grade levels; Tehran maintains that its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.
Iran first drew Western attention to construction at Qum when it deployed an air-defense unit to the site in 2006, Time reported.
"We didn't jump to any conclusions [about the site's purpose] and considered a number of alternatives," one U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Some analysts argued that the site was intended for nuclear activities, but "others warned it could also easily be a decoy the Iranians wanted to fix Western attention to as [it] continued clandestine work on another facility elsewhere," said Roland Jacquard, a Paris-based security analyst.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said he was first informed of the facility as President Barack Obama prepared to take office last January.
"This was presented at that time as something nobody knew about, a secret facility," Panetta said. "It was built into a mountain; obviously that raised question marks."
After Panetta was confirmed to his post, "we spent the next months trying to get better intel about what was going on there ... and conducting covert operations into that area," he said, declining to specify how the Qum facility was confirmed to be an unfinished uranium enrichment complex.
"Our body of knowledge, based on multiple sources, grew to the point that allowed us earlier this year to reach the high-confidence conclusion that this was a covert nuclear facility," the counterterrorism official said.
After the White House decided to release its knowledge of the site ahead of multilateral talks with Iran, Panetta said, the CIA and counterparts in France, Israel and the United Kingdom launched work on a comprehensive briefing on the facility to use "in the event that that information leaked out or that [the Obama administration] wanted to present it to the International Atomic Energy Agency" (Bobby Ghosh, Time, Oct. 7).
Russia yesterday warned the international community not to make assumptions about the intended purpose of the Qum facility, Interfax reported.
"The media have been filled with speculation lately about the real role of this facility, about the start of the construction and, in this connection, about violations by Iran of its agreements on guarantees to the IAEA," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"We are convinced that hasty conclusions on this score will not benefit the objective assessment of the situation," the release says. "One must concentrate now on the gathering and analysis of the information by IAEA experts, and wait until the agency releases its component conclusions" (Interfax, Oct. 7).
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commended last week's meeting between delegates from Iran, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, Agence France-Presse reported.
"These negotiations were a step forward and I hope we proceed with the same trend so we will have constructive cooperation to resolve all outstanding global issues," Ahmadinejad said, according to state media.
Ahmadinejad also expressed support for a direct discussion that took place on the meeting's sidelines between the top U.S. and Iranian negotiators. "As far as I know the negotiations of both the sides had a clear and reasonable framework and we approve of this," he said (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Oct. 7).
Iran yesterday indicated it would not sign the Additional Protocol to its international nuclear safeguards agreement, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The protocol would allow IAEA officials to demand additional information on Iran's nuclear sites and to carry out unannounced audits of the facilities.
"The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is quite aware of the fact that Iran has no plan to join the Additional Protocol," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said. "Iran's nuclear activities which are of peaceful nature are quite transparent and Tehran will continue with its program within the IAEA framework" (Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 7).
In Washington, the Defense Department announced yesterday that a 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb would be ready for use in several months, AFP reported.
"It is under development right now and should be deployable in the coming months," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.
Morrell did not specify whether the weapon was intended for targeting hardened nuclear sites in Iran.
"I don't think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature. This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in these days," he said. "The reality is that the world we live in is one in which there are people who seek to build weapons of mass destruction and they seek to do so in a clandestine fashion" (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).
Elsewhere, the State Department yesterday deflected Iranian accusations of U.S. involvement in the case of an Iranian nuclear scientist who went missing during a trip to Saudi Arabia last May, the Washington Post reported.
"We just basically don't have any information on this individual. I can only speak for the State Department at this point," spokesman Ian Kelly said.
A Saudi newspaper reported that the scientist was involved in work at the Qum facility and later sought asylum in Saudi Arabia (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Oct. 8).