WarSclerotic

The Arms Race-Israel News – Haaretz Israeli News source..

Iran appears as keen as always to produce nuclear weapons, amid reports about increasing cooperation with North Korea.

By Yossi Melman

The unrest and uprisings in the Arab world are distracting the international community from Iran’s nuclear program. Iran is taking advantage of the situation to accelerate its efforts. The head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, announced this week that his country would continue to enrich uranium. He said enrichment would be done at both the country’s facilities: to 3.5 percent at Natanz to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that would produce electricity, and to 20 percent at the fortified underground facility near Qom, intended for the research reactor in Tehran to produce isotopes for medicinal purposes.

The attempts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program by the West’s leading intelligence agencies are diversifying. Alongside the diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions (which are not particularly effective ), several violent operations have been carried out against Iran in recent years. Shell companies and fronts set up by Western intelligence agencies have sold flawed material to Iran. In operations attributed to the Mossad and CIA, the Stuxnext worm has been planted in Natanz’s computers that operate uranium-enriching centrifuges, shutting down more than 1,000 of the machines.

	In a photo from 2009, Iranian technicians work at a facility producing uranium fuel for a planned heavy-water nuclear reactor, just outside the city of Isfahan.
	Photo by: AP

Since 2007, there have been five assassination attempts on the lives of Iranian nuclear scientists. Four were killed and Abbasi Davani was wounded. Yet it seems Iran is as determined to carry on as its rivals are. The remarks by the atomic energy agency’s head are seen as a warning to the international community. His remarks come against the backdrop of worrisome reports about increasing cooperation between Iran and North Korea.

The German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, which has published several articles on these developments based on intelligence sources proven to be reliable, reported a few days ago that North Korea has supplied Iran with a highly precise computer to help simulate a nuclear explosion. According to the report, supported by “Western” intelligence agencies (a code word that could refer to Germany’s BND intelligence agency or even the Mossad ), the computer transfer is part of a larger $100 million deal between Tehran and Pyongyang. The broader deal also includes teaching and training Iranian experts in nuclear weapons and missiles.

There are various predictions about when Iran will be able to make its first nuclear bombs. The previous Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, estimated that it would happen in 2014-15, similar to the assessment by American intelligence. Others say Iran will prefer not to put together any bombs at all and keep the option open to easily assemble a bomb. In any case, even if Iran does build nuclear weapons, it will face a dilemma over whether to announce this or maintain a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” like Israel.

This entry was posted on September 1, 2011 at 6:57 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.