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U.S. Sees an Opportunity to Press Iran on Nuclear Fuel

(New York Times) David E. Sanger and William J. Broad - The Obama administration says that domestic unrest makes Iran's leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions. Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, an administration official said the hope was that the current troubles "give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn't worth the price tag." A senior Israeli diplomat in Washington said that in back-channel conversations "Obama has convinced us that it's worth trying the sanctions, at least for a few months." Obama's top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003. By the recent count of inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency, there were 3,936 centrifuges running at Iran's enrichment plant at Natanz - down from a peak of 4,920 centrifuges in June. Experts say Iran is working with older centrifuge technology that keeps breaking down. Iran began producing almost all of its own centrifuge components after discovering that the U.S. and other Western countries had sabotaged some key imported parts, and they have made a series of manufacturing errors.
2010-01-04 08:42:05
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