Iran official hits Western alarm over nuclear plant
TEHRAN: Western expressions of alarm over uranium-enrichment activities begun at a new underground plant in Iran are “politically motivated,” Tehran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday.
“These reactions are exaggerated and politically motivated and have been made over [ the] years,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency quoted the envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying.
He was commenting on Western reaction to the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s confirmation on Monday that Iran had begun enriching uranium to up to 20 percent level in its new Fordo plant, a fortified bunker sunk into a mountain southwest of Tehran. The United States said that the activity was “a further escalation of their (the Iranians’) ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations,” while Britain called it “provocative” and France said that it was a “particularly grave violation by Iran of international law.”
But Soltanieh said that the installation at Fordo was revealed two years ago and documented.
He stressed that the IAEA had 24hour cameras set up inside and visits by inspectors to monitor all nuclear activities.
Soltanieh renewed Tehran’s insistence that the 20- percent uranium from Fordo would be used for “peaceful and humanitarian” purposes in a Tehran research reactor that produces radioactive isotopes for cancer treatment.
Western critics note that the 20percent threshold reached by the centrifuges at the new plant is a significant advance toward the 90 percentplus level required for a warhead.
But Iranian officials have repeatedly denied any such ambition.
The Fordo row has stoked tensions already running high over Western moves to impose tough new sanctions targeting the Iranian economy and Iran’s threats to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway at the entrance to the Gulf that is the world’s most important chokepoint for oil tankers.
The United States and its chief Middle East ally, Israel, have both refused to rule out a resort to military action to prevent Iran from developing a capability to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Fordo, though, is a hardened underground fortress defended by antiaircaft batteries.
“Israel, which has already warned Iran that it could take military action against installations, is very, very worried by this facility . . . We are moving into dangerous territory,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Enriching uranium to weapons grade is one of the three main requirements for a nuclear arsenal. The uranium also needs to be weaponized, then converted into a warhead, and a delivery system capable of hitting a target needs to be developed.
A report published by the IAEA in November—the watchdog’s hardesthitting to date—pointed to evidence that Western governments said showed Iran had also been making efforts in the other two areas.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have been further strained by a death sentence announced on Monday against an Iranian-american former Marine convicted of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The United States alleged in October that it had foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
It has since twice ramped up sanctions on Iran’s economy, including targeting the Iranian central bank, which is the key clearing house for oil export payments.
For its part, Iran has paraded on television what it said was a sophisticated CIA drone. It has also warned the United States to keep one of its aircraft carriers out of the Gulf or risk the “full force” of the Iranian navy.