A nuclear debate: Is Iran designing warheads?
New York Times / W. Broad, M. Mazzetti & D. Sanger
29-Sep-2009 (4 comments)

WASHINGTON - When President Obama stood last week with the leaders of Britain and France to denounce Iran’s construction of a secret nuclear plant, the Western powers all appeared to be on the same page.

Behind their show of unity about Iran’s clandestine efforts to manufacture nuclear fuel, however, is a continuing debate among American, European and Israeli spies about a separate component of Iran’s nuclear program: its clandestine efforts to design a nuclear warhead.

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capt_ayhab

Dear Anonymuos Abserver

by capt_ayhab on Tue Sep 29, 2009 02:52 PM PDT

Check this  out, I just posted it in another thread.

//www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27599.ht...

Excerpts:

Why would the White House have preferred not to publicly disclose its
Qom evidence, seemingly something of a smoking gun for the case that
Iran hasn’t been transparent about even its current nuclear activities?
Why was it only prompted to make the announcement after it learned of
Iran’s letter to the IAEA?

 

“Because the Iranians are trying to get in front and create an argument
that they didn't do anything wrong,” the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace’s George Perkovich told POLITICO. “So to try to
block that, Obama had to get [it] out. We would have been better off
not announcing and keeping it as leverage and a way to see if the
Iranians kept their word in a future deal.”

 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the
IAEA did not notify the United States or other member states of the
letter it received from Iran.


Read more: //www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27599.html#ixzz0SXDuskVL End Excerpts

 

-YT 


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Anonymous Observer

There is also

by Anonymous Observer on Tue Sep 29, 2009 02:44 PM PDT

a detailed discussion of the subject in the Sunday, September 27, 2009's edition of the NY Times.  In that piece, it is argued that Iran rushed to do the cryptic disclosure on September 21, 2009 for the reason that it had realized that the site's security had been compromised.  This time, unlike other occasions, western intelligence apparently had a number of "human assets" (spies) on the ground within the facility that had provided them with accurate and detailed analysis.  The IRI had finally realized that it had to disclosed because it knew that they were going to be beaten over the head with it at the upcoming meeting.

I guess the size of the facility is the issue.  It's not big enough to produce enough enriched uranium for a power plant, but it is th exact right size for producing enough enriched uranium for a weapon. 

I guess We'll just have to see what happens now!    


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capt_ayhab

Ostaad Jan

by capt_ayhab on Tue Sep 29, 2009 02:33 PM PDT

It seems that Qom reactor's preliminary work had started during Rafsanjani's presidency as well. As a result no rules were broken there. Besides US had known about the facility for years, and the only reason they, so frantically rushed in [intelligence announcement] of last week was because they had been notified of Iran's letter to IAEA.

Thanks for the news article.

 

-YT 


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Ostaad

The short answer is, yes...

by Ostaad on Tue Sep 29, 2009 02:21 PM PDT

Rafsanjani publicly announced Iran's nuclear weapons policy when he was Iran's president. The policy has always been to be a "screwdriver away from the bomb". In that context Iran has been busy designing and building the components of the nuclear weapons with the intention of building one in case it needs to. The emphasis is on "in case", while there is NOTHING illegal about Iran's policy vis-a-vis its NPT treaty organization.

The idea that Iran has chosen the "clandestine" way to proceed is not illogical because all military R&D take place outside the public realm. The West has no choice other than trusting Iran just as Iran must trust them too.  Therefore expecting Iran to flung the doors to its military facilities is just over the top and Iran must not do any such thing, period.


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