(Wall Street Journal) Con Coughlin - Nuclear experts working for Western intelligence agencies have identified a number of glaring discrepancies in Iran's submissions to the IAEA, which suggest Tehran is making little effort to build the facilities and infrastructure that are normally required for a civilian program. Instead, Western officials have concluded that its civilian program is nothing more than a cover designed to conceal its attempts to build nuclear weapons. "The closer you examine Iran's declarations, the more you realize that they do not have a workable civilian nuclear program," said a senior Western counter-proliferation official who has assessed Iran's IAEA declarations. While Iran has made rapid progress at developing its uranium-enrichment capability, it has no facility, nor any current plans to develop one, to adapt the two-and-a-half tons of enriched material it has so far produced for use in a civilian nuclear reactor. "If Iran was serious about developing its civilian program, you would expect it to devote as much energy to the construction of nuclear power plants as it does to the enrichment of uranium," the counter-proliferation official explained. "But the basic fact of the matter is that the civilian part of Iran's civilian nuclear program is missing. So the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from this is that all Iran's activities are designed for a military program."
2010-06-04 10:03:27Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive