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How Iran Went Nuclear - Interview with Veteran Weapons Inspector Olli Heinonen

(Wall Street Journal) David Feith - In the fall of 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director-general Olli Heinonen was in his office in Vienna when a man appeared claiming that Iran was replicating its existing uranium-enrichment facility in an underground site near Qum. And so it was, as the IAEA and Western spy agencies later confirmed. Also under construction in Iran, he said, was a duplicate of the Arak heavy-water facility designed to produce plutonium. In other words, he said that Iran had at least two secret sites, and he was correct on the first. What about the second - is there a plutonium facility that remains secret today? Heinonen explains that Iran might be past the nuclear point of no return and that Iran's breakout would likely outpace the ability of the "international community" to respond. Heinonen's implication is that an Iranian bomb is now simply a matter of Tehran's will, not capability - despite two decades of international effort to prevent it. Short of military force, there is only so much that outsiders can do to stop a determined regime.
2013-03-04 00:00:00
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