[Mb-civic] FW: No deal with Iran

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:35:15 -0500
Subject: No deal with Iran

No deal with Iran

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

 

The Washington Times

March 8, 2005
 

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050307-083131-8271r.htm

 

PARIS. ‹ The European effort to induce Iran to give up its nuclear
program crashed and burned when Iranian Vice President Hassan Rohani
told French President Jacques Chirac recently that Iran will not give
up uranium enrichment.

      Sources close to the French president tell me Mr. Rohani's
steadfast refusal to offer any serious commitment to giving up its
suspect nuclear programs convinced Mr. Chirac to join the U.S. in
stepping up pressure on Iran, including an eventual referral to the
United Nations Security Council.

   
    But in Washington, advisers to President Bush now suggest the
United States join a failed European effort to offer new inducements to
Iran, including membership in the World Trade Organization and billions
of dollars of civilian airliners.

      This is the wrong time to offer more carrots to Iran. For nearly
20 years, Iran has pursued a clandestine nuclear weapons program while
suffering through U.S. sanctions and a trade embargo. Mr. Rohani
laughed at Mr. Chirac's insistence that Iran abandon those programs
now, especially after all the "blood and tears" Iran shed to acquire
them.

      The clock is ticking on Iran's bomb:

     On March 1, IAEA Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt told
the Governing Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna
that Iran still refused to allow inspectors to visit key nuclear sites.
The suspect sites and capabilities cited by Mr. Goldschmidt that Iran
so desperately protects coincide precisely with the capabilities Iran
needs to build the bomb.

      € In Isfahan, the Iranians have been producing uranium
hexafluoride (UF6) feedstock for enrichment purposes. The IAEA has
never believed their claim they built an industrial-scale plant without
testing the production line in a smaller, pilot plant. It now appears
increasingly likely Iran built a pilot plant in hardened underground
facilities it won't allow the agency to inspect, and has been producing
UF6 there secretly for years.

      € Iran keeps refusing to account for the activities of a facility
at the sprawling defense production complex at Lavisan-Shian in Tehran.
It razed the site in late 2003 to prevent the IAEA for discovering what
had been done there. It now seems probable Iran set up a secret
enrichment cascade at Lavisan-Shian and has been enriching uranium
there for years.

      € Iran continues to refuse access to facilities at the Parchin
military production plant south of Tehran, where it also produces RDX
explosives, precisely the type of high-powered explosives needed for
the non-nuclear "lenses" that trigger a nuclear implosion device. It
now appears Iran was probably conducting secret weaponization work at
Parchin.

      And the IAEA is finally discovering what many analysts who tracked
Iran the last 15 years have known for some time: Pakistan nuclear
scientist A.Q. Khan has helped Iran since 1987.

      As I reveal in an upcoming book, Mr. Khan first went to Iran in
1986 and signed a nuclear consulting agreement with the regime in early
1987. Now the IAEA has stumbled upon parts of the contract, including
lists of equipment provided by the elusive Mr. Khan. It includes a
veritable Stop 'N Shop of uranium enrichment equipment.

    No one knows for sure exactly how much uranium Iran has enriched in
secret. But if Iran used the equipment we now know it bought from the
Khan network over the last decade, they could now be able to produce 20
to 25 weapons.

    President Bush's advisers ill-serve the president, the nation and,
indeed, future generations by suggesting it is still possible to cut a
deal with Iran that will allow the mullahs to retain the capabilities
to build more bombs. It is time for more forceful action and there is
not a moment to lose.

   --- 

      Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of "Countdown to Crisis: the
Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," forthcoming from Crown Forum.

 

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