Does Iran Have the Bomb?
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
"Does Iran Have the Bomb?" Iran no longer pretends not to be developing nuclear weapons. But new information about sales by Russia and China, and At a conference in commemoration of the bombing...
...Countries as far afield as Germany, Pakistan, The American Spectator • February 199 6 Argentina, and South Africa have contributed to Iran's nuclear development, and the biggest suppliers are Russia and China...
...The Ibn Haytham Laboratory, inaugurated in 1992, is believed to be carrying out experiments in laser enrichment of uranium, using technology initially purchased from the U.S...
...The heavier isotope, U-238, clings to the walls of the centrifuge, while the fissile isotope, U-235, is siphoned off...
...But actions speak louder than words...
...intelligence community had nb information to suggest that weapons-grade fuel was being produced at the Ust-Kamenogorsk plant...
...Iran is not a country to be ignored," he said...
...Speaking to reporters at the National Press Club on January 5, 1995—only weeks after Operation Sapphire was announced—Defense Secretary William Perry acknowledged that if Tehranwere able to obtain a large amount of highly enriched uranium or plutonium from the former Soviet Union, "five years is on the high end" of how long it would probably take Iran to produce a bomb...
...Mail to: NEW OXFORD REVIEW Room 92 1069 Kains Ave...
...Iran is known to have sent numerous procurement teams to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia beginning in 1991, as central authority in the USSR was crumbling...
...On one of the tables was a stack of English-language Tehran Times...
...Despite economic difficulties and declining oil prices, it has devoted billions of dollars of scarce hard currency to finance large-scale nuclear purchases from Russia and China...
...Shortly after the May 10, 1995 summit, Yeltsin admitted that the agreement with Iran "does contain components of civilian and military nuclear energy...
...Women in black robes and chadors brought tea, coffee, and sweets...
...If Iran needed that much uranium, it could only have been for weapons...
...Since 1988 Iran has publicly inaugurated more than fifteen new nuclear facilities...
...Some analysts believe the group may have ties to Israeli intelligence...
...This facility was officially dedicated to "agricultural research" and "nuclear medicine...
...The Karaj nuclear center, which the regime claims is an agricultural and medical research center, was inaugurated publicly in 1991 by Vice President Hassan Habibi...
...Quality hardcover books, starting at $3.95 • Thousands of titles, including hundreds of new arrivals in each Catalog issue • Books for every interest something for everyone r Please send me your FREE Catalog of Bargain Books...
...I ambled down a series of green marble hallways into the reception rooms, done up in lots of brass and glass and inlaid with sparkling lights...
...Iran was still eight to ten years away from the bomb, Reidel claimed, but added, "If Iran receives critical foreign assistance, that will be considerably shorter...
...The clerical regime in Tehran is determined to become a full-fledged nuclear weapons power...
...There was simply an ovular hole in the floor in the center of each stall, with foot treads on either side...
...Bleaching is the process used for processing uranium into yellowcake...
...Other reports received from sources in Europe suggested additional deliveries by air...
...Six hundred kilograms of this uranium is enough to fabricate between thirty and thirty-five bombs...
...What infuriates the neo-Modernists in the Church is that the new converts are being drawn by the Magisterium, the papacy, the Catholicism of the ages — all those things the dissenters want to dilute or dismember...
...subscription US$24 (regularly $29) Payment must be drawn in U.S Dollars ^ Sample copy $3.50 Send coupon or letter...
...Finding highly enriched uranium, and in such large quantities, at a plant previously believed to be engaged in low-level enrichment was quite a shock," one official said...
...Although it was elaborate, off-white marble walls and floors and green marble sinks, there were no toilets or urinals...
...In a February 1987 address to Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, then-President Ali Khamenei pointed to the threats facing Iran from the outside as the justification for their nuclear effort: "The least we can do to face this danger is to let our enemies know that we can defend ourselves...
...It needed to enrich the uranium hexafluoride gas...
...She tied a scarf tightly around her head before we left the plane, as did every other woman aboard, so as to ward off trouble from the authorities...
...Navy and from Israel, were sufficient reason for devoting scarce resources to nuclear research...
...U.S...
...At the top I was greeted by an old woman in a black robe and chador on her head, who handed me a carnation...
...Department of Energy launched a multi-million dollar effort, dubbed Operation Sapphire, to block it...
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...What's more, we're "influential," to quote the Los Angeles Times...
...Since 1984, when the Islamic Republic reinvigorated the nuclear weapons program initiated by the Shah but later shelved by the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran has been seeking that "critical foreign assistance...
...According to the nuclear trade press, Iran had previously been receiving "large quantities" of yellowcake from South Africa that it never reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency...
...officials believe that Rudan is the Chinese-built hex plant...
...The forum for the new generation of converts is the NEW OXFORD REVIEW, a monthly magazine which takes its name from the 19th-century Oxford Movement in England, and its inspiration from John Henry Newman...
...While little information on these efforts has filtered out, one attempt is known to have nearly succeeded...
...30 February 1996 • The American Spectator America's Biggest Selection of • Choose from thousands of titles save up to 80% If you love books AND bargains, you'll love our Catalog...
...Please allow 2 to 8 weeks for delivery of first issue) SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATES ^ One-year subscription $14 (regularly $19) ^ One-year student, unemployed, or retired person's subscription $12 (regularly $16) ^ Two-year subscription $23 (regularly $35) NAME (Please print or type) STREET ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP CODE FOR FIRST-TIME SUBSCRIBERS ^ One-year non-U.S...
...In October 1989 a report from the Iranian parliament stated that within two years Iran was planning to open a "uranium bullion plant" near Yazd—presumably a uranium mill—that Export control officials in France and Germany have told me that they have broken up several attempts by Iranian intelligence agents to purchase centrifuge enrichment equipment on Europe's black market...
...These facilities and a host of others, reported by sources inside Iran but whose existence has never been publicly confirmed by government officials tracking the Iranian nuclear program, show a dramatic increase of nuclear activity in recent years...
...To do so, Iran has built a large number of secret facilities beyond international control...
...One Iranian press report refers to it as a "cyclotron center," which implies enrichment capability...
...These "unsafeguarded" facilities range from uranium mines in Iran's eastern province of Yazd to a series of top secret plants for enriching uranium hexafluoride gas to weapons grade material...
...Two years means we need to take immediate action...
...After negotiations late in 1994, Russia pledged to build a turnkey centrifuge enrichment plant in Iran as part of the January 8, 1995 protocol between Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, Minatom...
...04$ 'WEFK AYATOLLAHLAND he Mehrabad airport in Tehran was crowded when I arrived shortly after 1:0o a.m...
...With direct purchases of weapons-grade material, Iran "might be able to bypass the most difficult step in acquiring a nuclear weapon—the production of fissile material —and go directly to weaponization...
...officials now believe that in addition to completing the processing plants begun by INVAP, China built Iran's "hex" plant...
...Funds for the plant were allocated within the 1989-1994 Five-Year Plan...
...Among the converts who've written for the REVIEW are Walker Percy, Sheldon Vanauken, L. Brent Bozell, Avery Dulles, Ronda Chervin, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, Paul Vitz, Russell Kirk...
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...Amrollahi told a Tehran radio interviewer in September 1989 that the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization planned to open a "high bleaching project" that would become operational by the end of the year...
...Depending on the skills of Iran's nuclear physicists—many of whom were initially trained in the United States in the Iwo's — it could take Iran "several months or several years to manufacture a weapon," he believes...
...Mining uranium and processing it into yellowcake are only the first steps toward a bomb...
...28 time Iran is not going to renounce that option"—especially, he added, "if its survival is at stake...
...But do you know...
...A long front-page story said the Million Man March in Washington "carried the message of the Islamic revolution to the U.S...
...An obscure Iranian opposition group known as Babak Khoramdim claimed responsibility for kidnapping the Chinese technician...
...They know that orthodox Catholicism is back with new life and vigor, that the tide is turning...
...She was elaborately polite...
...How far away is Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons...
...I went off to the men's room...
...But new information about sales by Russia and China, and At a conference in commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki last September 30, a senior Iranian official made an astonishing statement about Iran's nuclear intentions...
...With this in mind, you should work hard and at great speed...
...Mashadi's comments should put to rest once and for all any February 1996 • The American Spectator BOMB...
...President Clinton's total trade embargo on Iran —and his recent support for Sen...
...BY KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN misunderstanding about Iran's nuclear intentions...
...diplomats have made little headway with Russia and China...
...on board an Air Force C-5 transport jet...
...Nobody believes the 8-io year estimate, which was first used almost ten years ago," say sources with access to American intelligence data on the Iran nuclear program...
...Waldo Stumpf, chairman of South Africa's Atomic Energy Board, has confirmed these deals...
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...It needed to enrich the uranium hexafluoride gas...
...An Iranian man in a rumpled suit was standing next to a van at the bottom of the gangway and asked if I was "Mr...
...If these pressures [from the United States and Israel] continue, there will be an explosion, and the whole region will be on fire...
...officials believe these agreements were discussed during an unusual public tour of Iran's nuclear facilities on July 6-7, 1991, by Chinese Premier Li Peng...
...Carlson...
...My seat-mate was a businesswoman from Singapore...
...Work on these plants was begun by the Argentine National Institute for Applied Research, INVAP, as part of an $18 million contract signed with Iran in 1989...
...This is accomplished by spinning the gas in highspeed centrifuges that separate the uranium into its two naturally occurring isotopes, much as cream is separated from milk at a dairy...
...It contains a small cyclotron for experiments in uranium enrichment—purchased from Ion Beam Applications in Belgium in 1991 and installed in 1993—and a Chinese-supplied calutron that can be used for the same purpose...
...Most recently the Bon ab Atomic Energy Research Center was inaugurated in July 1995...
...This process is repeated tens of times until the concentration of U-235 reaches 93 percent— enough to sustain a chain reaction...
...The operation was made public in November 1994, just as the last shipment was being flown into the U.S...
...This was certainly a colorful spot...
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...One of their lead ayatollahs gave a speech to a huge crowd in the city of Babol, saying that "masses of black men chanted Allah-o-akbar on the Washington Mall and around the Capitol...
...Al D'Amato's proposal to impose sanctions on foreign companies investing in Iran—may be his administration's form of "immediate action...
...We keep our costs low to save you money We buy 250 to 500 titles weekly, many in small or limited quantities...
...But tucked into Article 6 were several critical items—plutonium production reactors, a gas ultracentrifuge plant, and what appeared to be a nuclear weapons test shaft—which, the Clinton administration charged, effectively transferred nuclear weapons technology to Iran...
...The floors were black marble, covered with an aqua carpet...
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...In any event it reflects the uneasiness of the intelligence community with the status of our strategic export controls...
...We don't equate Catholicism with Americanism or Western civilization...
...The little that we know about the "hex" plant began to filter out on June 7, 1993, when Iran's interior minister, Ali Besharati, made an unusual public announcement...
...According to Boston's Cardinal Law, "What is fascinating about the New Oxford Review is that it is a sign of contradiction": At a time when decadent Western culture has invaded the Church, and well-publicized quisling Catholics are openly defiant of Church teaching, here is a counter-tendency celebrating the fullness of the Truth...
...Growing security problems in Iran's southeast provinces had led to several kidnappings of foreign workers in recent weeks, Besharati said...
...Export control officials in France and Germany have told me in interviews that they have broken up several attempts by Iranian intelligence agents in recent years to purchase centrifuge enrichment equipment on Europe's black market...
...And China, which did not sign the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons until 1991, has a long history of providing assistance to other Third World bomb programs...
...The yellowcake must subsequently be transformed into uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6), and enriched to 93 percent purity by using gas ultracentrifuges...
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...At bottom, his argument amounted to this: Iran is seeking nuclear weapons not to dominate Middle East oil wells or to launch a sneak terrorist attack against the United States, but to win respect...
...Meanwhile, new evidence gathered from interviews with senior government officials and intelligence sources in Washington, Bonn, and Paris suggests that Iran may be much further along in its nuclear program than thought previously by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna...
...But at least Iran Air got him to Isfahan on time— and definitely very sober...
...Some of the furniture was red and purple RICHARD W. CARLSON is president and chief executive officer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
...officials point to declarations by the Iranians themselves as further evidence of Iran's secret uranium enrichment program...
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...Only in recent years, and especially since the Gulf war, have Iranian leaders become more cautious in their public statements, emphatically proclaiming their nuclear innocence...
...Perhaps because it was having difficulty in Europe, Iran then turned to Russia...
...Most orders are shipped within 48 hours...
...Amrollahi announced that Iran intended to open a uranium milling plant to process uranium ore into yellowcake, a yellow powder that can be further enriched to make a uranium bomb...
...much more, suggests that the mullah regime is a lot closer than anyone thought...
...Had Iran succeeded in purchasing this material, it could have become a nuclear power virtually overnight...
...While I do not believe Iran is actively seeking nuclear weapons," he said, "at the same KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN is the publisher of Iran Brief, a monthly investigative newsletter on strategy, trade, and policy...
...In a Reuters dispatch from Tehran on December 4, a senior Iranian finance official claimed that France and Germany planned to make some $1.8 billion in fresh loans available to Iran in the coming months, while Japanese diplomats have argued that Japan should go forward with a long-overdue $600 million loan to help Iran to build a dam over the Karoun River...
...BY RICHARD W. CARLSON 34 February 1996 • The American Spectator...
...Amrollahi subsequently stated that Iran would open three such facilities at different locations...
...32 February 199 6 • The American Spectator Loyal Catholics: 'DON'T BE DISTRESSED After Vatican II the number of converts to Catholicism slowed to a trickle...
...Perhaps because it was having difficulty in Europe, Iran then turned to Russia...
...The Commerce Department has so thoroughly dismantled the export control system," said a disgruntled official at another government agency, "that 29 the only tool left for preventing the sale of strategic technology to a country like Iran is a total trade embargo...
...There A chance visitor to Iran finds an eerie mix of Soviet-style paranoia and Islamic-brand misogyny...
...The main item of that protocol was the S800 million contract to rebuild the Busheir nuclear power plant...
...Therefore, every step you take here is in defense of your country and your evolution...
...While he hastens to add that it is impossible to know for certain just how far Iran really is from the bomb, it is this very uncertainty surrounding Iran's ability to become a world-class menace overnight that is the most chilling of all...
...Zip HAMILTON 5005 Oak, Falls Village CT 06031-5005 Name Address City State would employ 800 workers...
...The procurement teams visited a wide variety of nuclear sites and attempted to purchase weapons-grade material and recruit Russian and Kazakh nuclear scientists...
...pressure, the Argentine government announced in January 1992 that it was withdrawing from the agreement, after a series of initial ship-ments...
...Of paramount concern is Iran's concerted effort to master what is called the "uranium cycle," from the mining of raw ore to the enrichment of uranium fuel to weapons grade...
...In September 1989, Iran's Deputy President for Atomic Energy, Reza Amrollahi, announced that uranium deposits had been discovered near the town of Saghand, in Yazd...
...Soon afterwards, he said, additional deposits had been discovered "in ten areas" scattered throughout Iran, and that production of up to 5,000 tons would begin at the mines in 1990...
...Yes, as Newsweek says, we're "cheeky...
...And it was so serious that the U.S...
...But if you say two years, then the alarm bells start going off...
...He argued that the tough security environment in which Iran lives, and the perceived threat Iran feels from the presence of the U.S...
...When Assistant Secretary of Defense Bruce Reidel addressed this question before a House International Committee panel on November 9, he fudged his response...
...You cannot expect a nation with legitimate security concerns to sit idly by in the face of a threat," he said...
...U.S...
...The van took me across the tarmac to a building whose sign said, "Important Commercial People...
...With abundant local supplies of uranium, unsafe-guarded milling plants, and a secret plant to make UF6, Iran was still one step from obtaining weapons-grade fuel...
...When the U.S...
...She never came back...
...With abundant local supplies of uranium, unsafe-guarded milling plants, and a secret plant to make UF6, Iran was still one important step from obtaining weapons-grade fuel...
...Even if cooperation were forthcoming from both, mafia elements would most likely succeed in circumventing any efforts by the governments in Moscow and Peking to curtail an increasingly dangerous nuclear trade...
...Asked whether Iran might be disguising a clandestine nuclear weapons program behind its very large civilian nuclear projects, Hassan Mashadi —a senior arms control adviser to Iran's foreign minister and for five years Iran's representative at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament—stated unequivocally that Iran was "keeping its nuclear options open...
...If you feel overwhelmed by all the moral laxity, broken vows, doubt, and dissension within the Church's portals, cheer up by tasting the rebirth of authentic Catholic spirit in the pages of the NEW OXFORD REVIEW...
...In the early days of the program, Iran's leaders were quite explicit about their true intentions...
...Among the kidnap victims: three North Koreans, a Chinese nuclear technician, an Australian, and two Iranian employees of Tehran's Atomic Energy Organization...
...Western intelligence officials now estimate that Iran is producing industrial quantities of UF6 at a Chinese-built plant...
...But now that the papacy has regained its bearings and confidence, the Church has attracted a new wave of converts, including highly literate people like Malcolm Muggeridge, Richard John Neuhaus, and Lewis Lehrman...
...We're not out to repeal Vatican I I. We welcome Protestant writers, solid "mere Christians" of the C.S...
...In a subsequent statement, Besharati said the Chinese technician was working at the Rudan uranium plant "located near the town of Fasa in the Shiraz region...
...We're for Catholics with catholic tastes and inquiring minds...
...Meanwhile U.S...
...U.S...
...The only use for this substance is as feedstock to make weapons-grade fuel...
...So much for the "purely civilian" nature of Russia's nuclear involvement in Iran...
...Both contracts were allegedly part of the secret nuclear cooperation agreement signed in 1991...
...learned of the Iranian efforts, the Department of Energy hurriedly intervened to purchase the uranium and airlift it to the United States for safekeeping...
...Save up to 80...
...The recent discovery in Europe of plutonium and enriched uranium smuggled out of the former Soviet Union raises the possibility that the diversion of fissile material may in fact have already occurred," Eisenstadt says...
...A recent estimate of Iran's nuclear timetable by Michael Eisenstadt, a military affairs analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, paints an even starker picture...
...In December 1994 I received reports from the Iranian portof Bandar Abbas that a Chinese cargo ship had just docked there carrying barrels of hydrogen fluoride, a chemical needed to make UF6...
...One of them asked for my passport and said she would get my bags...
...Many titles sell out fast, but by acting quickly you can take advantage of rock-bottom prices on books which may never be offered again, by anyone...
...If you tell them not to go nuclear, then what option do you leave open for them...
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...Given mounting dissent inside Iran, the ruling mullahs may see nuclear weapons as their best insurance policy for survival...
...and green and some of it was orange and pink...
...These purchases have led French intelligence analysts to suspect the beginnings of uranium enrichment research at this facility...
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...Berkeley, CA 94706 PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER Iranian procurement teams approached low-level officials at the Ulbinsky Metallurgy Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, in an attempt to purchase part of a stockpile of 600 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium secretly stored at the site...
...The steps were polished marble...
...If you're distressed, consider: The dissenters are even more distressed...
...President Yeltsin has since acknowledged the validity of Washington's concerns...
...In Russia alone there are likely hundreds of nuclear warheads floating around the free market—weapons that were retired in the dark days of the Cold War and have never been accounted for since...
...If you're ever displeased, simply return any book for a full refund of the purchase price...
...But he went on to claim that Russia had now excluded "the military component" from the contract...
...Lewis variety...
...We were just lucky...
...In private conversation after the conference, Mashadi told me that Iran needs long-range ballistic missiles "to deter an Israeli attack" on Iranian nuclear facilities or other military assets...
...But don't get us wrong: We're not just for converts...
...in the late 1970's...
...does IRAN have the 0 z 0 Iran no longer pretends not to be developing nuclear weapons...
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...Iran's yellowcake purchases occurred at a time when Iran had no plans (or budget) to build civilian nuclear power plants...
...But clearly, nuclear weapons provide the most comfort to Iran's leaders...
...In Iran international flights land in the middle of the night...
...Iran has invested billions of dollars over the past decade to build a wide variety of nuclear research facilities and to train Iranian nuclear physicists and engineers overseas...
...The type of help these nations are offering the Tehran regime has the Clinton administration deeply worried...
...officials now believe these facilities were corn-pleted by the Chinese...
...And so much for the fiction that Iran is simply seeking to develop civilian nuclear power...
...The group also claimed responsibility for the bombing of a company in Switzerland, Bioengineering AG, which had contracted to sell Iran biological fermenters that intelligence officials say could have been used to manufacture biological weapons...
...He said the massive gathering was in opposition to the Clinton government, which he called a "hegemonic regime in disgrace...
...But while the Clinton administration has been receiving quiet moral support on the embargo from France and Japan, both have powerful economic incentives for retaining close relations with Tehran...
...Under intense U.S...
...Of course, Iran could simply sidestep the lengthy and extremely costly process of building uranium enrichment plants by purchasing weapons-grade material "off the shelf" from the Russian mafia...
...Prior to Operation Sapphire, the U.S...
Vol. 29 • February 1996 • No. 2
