Iran's Response On Nuclear Issue

[KashifAsrar]

West rejects Iran offer of solution to nuclear dispute

04.10.2006 - 09:56 CET | By Helena Spongenberg
An Iranian proposed solution to the nuclear dispute has caused some division with France, Germany, the UK and the US rejecting it but Brussels' Javier Solana calling it "interesting".

Iran had suggested the creation of a consortium where France would organise and monitor the production of enriched uranium in Iran.
"In order to reach a solution, we've just had an idea: we propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium," the deputy director of the Iranian Atomic Energy Mahamed Saidi said on a radio programme in Tehran on Tuesday (3 October), according to the New York Times.

He later told France Info radio that in this way Paris could considerably control its uranium enrichment activities.

Western states have rejected the offer saying it is a stalling tactic and that it falls short of the UN security council's demand that Tehran freeze all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

But EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana held the door open describing the latest Iranian proposal as "interesting" and that "this is something we have to analyse in greater detail," according to press reports.

He added that the idea of a control of Iranian enrichment "had been discussed since the beginning," reports Le Figaro. "It is perhaps an idea that can be discussed more in detail now."

Mr Solana has been negotiating with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on behalf of the five permanent UN security council members - China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – and Germany.

But progress has been slow with Mr Solana acknowledging on Monday "The fundamental matter of suspension has not been agreed."

UN sanctions on Iran
Western countries are moving towards imposing UN sanctions on Iran after Mr Solana briefed foreign ministers of the permanent members of the UN security council and Germany over the weekend on the state of the talks.

Iran has hinted that if sanctions are imposed, it would leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would mean UN inspectors would no longer be able to monitor Iran's nuclear programme, and that it might close the Straits of Hormuz, a move which would choke off most of the oil supply from the Gulf.

US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice is scheduled to be in Europe at the end of the week to discuss sanctions with Britain, France and Germany.

"I hope that there is still room to resolve this, but the international community is running out of time because soon its own credibility ... will be a matter of question," Ms Rice said at a joint news conference on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov flew to Tehran yesterday to make a renewed attempt at finding a solution.

http://euobserver.com/24/22561

 

[Neo]

Iran doubles nuke enrichment capacity

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium by successfully executing the process with a second network of centrifuges, a semiofficial news agency reported Friday, sending a defiant new message to the U.N. Security Council.

Council members are working on a draft resolution that would impose limited sanctions on the Islamic republic because of its refusal to cease enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a civilian nuclear reactor or fissile material for a warhead.

The Iranian Students News Agency quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran has successfully begun injecting gas into a second network of centrifuges.

"We are injecting gas into the second cascade, which we installed two weeks ago," the official said, according to ISNA.

The news agency said the second cascade had doubled Iran's capacity to enrich uranium.

"We have already exploited the product of the second cascade," the official was quoted as saying.

Iranian authorities are believed to leak ISNA information that they want published but consider too sensitive for release to official media.

France's Foreign Ministry called Iran's expansion of its nuclear program a "negative signal" that should be taken to account at U.N. talks over possible sanctions.

A spokesman for the ministry, Jean-Baptiste Mattei, said the Iranian announcement was not a great surprise because the International Atomic Energy Agency had said in August that Iran was developing new nuclear capacities.

"The door to negotiations is always open, but at the same time the priority goes to the negotiations for a U.N. Security Council resolution," Mattei said at a news conference.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, expressed support for sanctions against Iran but insisted that they be temporary and reversible.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Iran's action was not a cause for worry.

"I don't share concerns on this account," Ivanov told reporters, adding that a second network of centrifuges launched by Iran was under IAEA supervision. "It's premature to talk of uranium enrichment or of military uranium."

Russia has strong commercial ties to Tehran, with a $1 billion contract to build Iran's first nuclear power station.

In a separate report on Friday, ISNA quoted Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, as saying his country's enrichment program should not hinder negotiations with the West.

"It is possible to review both nuclear and regional issues through negotiation," Larijani was quoted as saying.

Larijani called for an open negotiation on the enrichment issue, and blamed the West of being irrational in its opposition to an Iranian nuclear program, which Tehran says is geared toward purely civilian use.

Diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the information to media, told The Associated Press on Monday that even the decision to "dry test" the 164 centrifuges in the second Iranian pilot enrichment facility showed Iran's defiance of the Security Council. The council had set an Aug. 31 deadline for Tehran to cease all experiments linked to enrichment.

Iran produced a small batch of low-enriched uranium — suitable as nuclear fuel but not weapons grade — in February, using its initial cascade of 164 centrifuges at its pilot plant at Natanz.

The Iran official quoted by ISNA said the nuclear watchdog was fully aware that Tehran was injecting the gas in its new centrifuges, and that nuclear inspectors had already arrived in Iran.

The Vienna, Austria-based IAEA would not comment on the report.

Iran says it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by the end of this year. Some 54,000 centrifuges would be required to produce enough nuclear fuel for a reactor.

Although Iran is nowhere near that goal, its successful operation of more cascades of centrifuges indicates that the country is gradually mastering the complexities of producing enriched uranium.

The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to build an atomic bomb under the guise of a civilian nuclear program. But Iran denies this, saying its program is strictly for the generation of electricity.

The U.S. and its European allies are circulating a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would ban the sale of missile and nuclear technology to Iran and deny the country certain assistance from the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

China and Russia, which can veto Security Council resolutions, are reportedly pushing for continued dialogue with Iran instead of punishment.

The enrichment process takes gas produced from raw uranium and aims to increase its proportion of the uranium-235 isotope, needed for nuclear fission.

The gas is pumped into a centrifuge, which spins, causing a small portion of the heavier, more prevalent uranium-238 isotope to drop away. The gas then proceeds to other centrifuges — thousands of them — where the process is repeated, increasing the proportion of uranium-235.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear

 

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Tehran welcomes Russia's position on Iran nuclear issue 14:28 | 29/ 10/ 2006



TEHRAN, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Tehran welcomes Russia's position on the peaceful settlement of the Iran nuclear issue, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday.

Iran has been at the center of an international dispute this year over its nuclear ambitions. Some countries suspect the Islamic Republic of pursuing a covert weapons program, but Tehran has consistently denied the claims and says it needs nuclear energy for civilian needs.

Hosseini said the positions of Russia and China on the Iran nuclear issue differed from the position of European states. Russia believed sanctions against Iran would not be imposed and the doors for negotiations were still open.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1696 July 31, demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment by August 31 as a condition for negotiations on a package of proposals offered to Iran by six world powers (Russia, China, Britain, France, the United States and Germany). But Iran refused to fulfill this demand, saying its nuclear research program was meant for peaceful purposes and complied with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Three European states (France, Germany and Britain) proposed earlier this week a new draft UN resolution on Iran, which included measures to ban the sale of missile and nuclear technologies to the country, freeze Tehran's military bank accounts and impose visa restrictions for officials linked to the nuclear industry.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the draft new UN resolution on Iran offered by the three European states failed to correspond to the position earlier coordinated by the six world powers mediating Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

 

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Russia says Iran sanctions draft goes too far
Fri Nov 3, 2006 4:38 PM GMT
By David Brunnstrom

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia is ready to back a U.N. resolution to curb Iran's nuclear programme but sanctions drawn up by European leaders greatly exceed what Moscow agreed with Western powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

Negotiations on the draft resolution, authored by Britain, France and Germany with general U.S. support, promise to be tough, possibly lasting weeks, because veto-wielding Russia and China oppose punitive action against Tehran.

Lavrov was speaking in Brussels as envoys of the six world powers prepared to meet at the United Nations later in the day to tackle differences over steps towards sanctions.


He said the six had agreed that measures against Iran should be "reasonable ... be proportional given the actual situation as regards the nuclear programme in Iran and should also be in stages".

"We were prepared and are still prepared to draw up measures of that sort," he told reporters after talks with Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, representing the European Union presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"We do not intend to drop back our efforts as regards the problem of Iran and nuclear power," Lavrov said, but he added: "What the EU troika drew up went way beyond what was agreed."

Earlier, Lavrov's deputy, Sergei Kislyak, said Moscow, which is keen to protect major trade stakes in Iran, would not back the resolution without significant changes.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not think Russia would block the U.N. resolution but conceded it might not be as tough as the United States would have liked.

"I think we will have a resolution that puts sanctions on Iran. It won't be as strong a resolution as if we had written it ourselves," Rice said in an interview with the Glenn Beck radio show. "But I think what you're seeing is some negotiation right now about what that resolution is going to say," she added.

On Wednesday, Lavrov said Russia rejected steps that would corner Iran, alluding to a travel ban in the draft on Iran's nuclear ambitions, which the West believes are a cover for bombmaking but Tehran says involve generating electricity only.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER BAN

The draft orders all countries to prevent the sale and supply of equipment, technology and financing contributing to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. It would freeze assets of people and entities involved in these programmes and prevent them from travelling except for special events.

"I would think we will get a resolution imposing some minor sanctions," said a Western diplomat at the United Nations, who asked not to be identified. "But that would require substantive concessions from both the Americans, who want tougher sanctions, and the Russians, who (really) want no sanctions at all."

Friday's meeting of the six powers will be the first in more than a week. All but Germany, a key negotiator, are permanent Security Council members with veto rights.

Russia's demands are expected to include softening the sanctions and redefining an exemption for a nuclear reactor Moscow is building for Iran, Security Council diplomats said.

The European-authored draft exempts from sanctions the $800 million Bushehr reactor in southwestern Iran, expected to go into operation late next year.

But the draft says Russia must check with a Security Council committee if it delivers material that can be used for weapons, such as parts used for the uranium enrichment cycle.

Russia has objected to including Bushehr in the resolution in the first place, saying it was a power plant that is legal under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Lavrov has said the resolution should focus only on areas the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has defined as serious, such as uranium enrichment, chemical processing and heavy-water reactors.

Iran's nuclear research programme has already purified nominal amounts of uranium to the low level needed to fuel power plants. Refined to a high level, uranium can set off the chain reaction at the heart of atomic bombs.

(Additional reporting by Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations, Ali Ronaghi in Tehran, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow, Mark Heinrich in Vienna and Sophie Walker in London)

 

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Iran War Games Aimed to Warn U.S. Allies Against Backing Attack

By Tony Capaccio

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Iran's 10-day war games this month were aimed at intimidating U.S. allies in the region and dissuading them from cooperating in a potential strike against the Tehran government, American military officials and analysts have concluded.

The Gulf of Oman exercises were the third this year and the most provocative, the analysts said. Volleys of short-range missiles suggested Iran could overwhelm missile defenses such as those of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. New anti-ship missiles and practice attacks on barges showed an ability to disrupt oil traffic, and Iran's first firing in a war game of a new missile showed a potential to strike Israel.

The games were ``designed to intimidate the smaller nations in the region in a way that I haven't quite seen before,'' Army General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said in a Nov. 15 interview.

Analysts say Iran's intent was to gain leverage in the dispute over its nuclear program and to remind the world that, if attacked, it is capable of a broad, sustained response that would roil world oil markets, set back U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and potentially drag the region into a wider war.

Michael Eisenstadt, an Iran expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Iran has often tried to use war games ``to intimidate, but the context and the extent of the missile firings'' is much different from past exercises.

The message to the region ``is don't even think once about assisting in a preventive strike,'' Eisenstadt said.

Iran has defied international calls to suspend its nuclear program, and the United Nations said the nation last month doubled its capacity to produce enriched uranium. Iran says the fuel is needed to generate electricity. The U.S. suspects the program is a precursor to building nuclear weapons.

Wider War

Eisenstadt said the exercises, which ended Nov. 9, reinforced a message Iran sent several months earlier through Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim group it supports in Lebanon, in its war with Israel.

During the war, Hezbollah struck an Israeli ship with a guided missile obtained from Iran and fired almost 4,000 Iranian- supplied short-range missiles into Israel -- a demonstration of Iran's firepower and ability to widen any war against it, Eisenstadt said.

Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has conducted U.S. war games on Iran, said that if Iran were attacked, Hezbollah would immediately attack Israel. ``That's almost a certainty,'' he said.

`Don't Lose Iraq'

Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Iran and its surrogates could take a toll on U.S. facilities in the Middle East and seriously undermine efforts to secure and stabilize Iraq. ``We don't want to lose Iraq in the course of taking down Iran's nuclear program,'' Pollack said.

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pledged this year that he'd turn his militia on U.S. forces in Iraq if Iran, which also has a Shiite Muslim majority, is attacked.

Iran's armed forces include 398,000 regular troops, about 120,000 of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps created under the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic republic in 1979, and about 2 million reserves.

Most of the army is arrayed along the Iraq border and is capable of sustained guerrilla warfare. Abizaid, 55, said these ground forces have been practicing guerrilla tactics on the assumption the U.S. would invade.

``We shouldn't ever underestimate Iranian military power,'' Abizaid told reporters in Washington in September. Iran has ``the most powerful military force in the region except for the United States, but the mismatch between our military power and their power is very, very substantial.''

`Come After Us'

Pollack said that, while Iran's military lacks modern communications, country-wide integrated air defenses and modern aircraft, it would use what it has in unconventional ways that could prove effective in the short run. ``They are going to come after us in the Persian Gulf,'' he said.

In the war games, analysts said, Iran fired at least three different anti-ship missiles near the 33-mile Strait of Hormuz, through which an estimated 25 percent of the world's oil traffic flows.

The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence estimates that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which conducted the war games, has as many as 1,000 boats up to 60 feet long with long-range torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles, as well as five high- speed Chinese catamarans armed with long-range missiles.

U.S. Central Command officials estimate Iran may have up to 5,000 naval mines deployable by planes, boats and submarines.

``An attack could include over 100 boats in coordinated groups of 20 to 30 approaching simultaneously from multiple axes,'' the Office of Naval Intelligence said in an assessment before the war games.

Tactics

Iran used such tactics in late 1987 and early 1988 against U.S. ships and U.S.-flagged tankers in the Persian Gulf after the President Ronald Reagan's administration sided with Iraq in its war with the Islamic republic.

Since then, Iran has developed an extensive network of bases and communications on the small islands in the Strait.

In addition, Iran last week started taking delivery of 30 Russian-made, short-range air-defense missile systems that it purchased in December 2005, according to the Russian news service Interfax. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said these systems would ``significantly enhance'' Iran's ability to prevent U.S. planes from protecting ships in the Persian Gulf.

The war games -- coupled with Iran's refusal to halt its nuclear program and its president's insistent calls for Israel's destruction -- prompted Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh to say Iran must be stopped. Preemptive military action should be a last resort, ``but even the last resort is sometimes the only resort,'' he told reporters in Jerusalem.

Shahab-3

Israel's reaction was in part prompted by the firing of the Shahab-3, Iran's new medium-range missile. It has an estimated range of 800 miles (1,300 kilometers), enough to hit Tel Aviv, said the Office of Naval Intelligence. The missile is believed to carry a new cluster munition warhead that might be a threat to military formations, bases and civilians.

The war games were ``not merely exercises to train military personnel,'' said Yiftah S. Shapir, a military analyst with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. ``They were carefully geared for their political purpose.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: November 28, 2006 17:45 EST


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