End Iran's Nuclear Charade
Wall Street Journal
03-Jun-2010

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.

The controversial 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that concluded "with high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 can now be safely put to rest. "There is only one program in Iran, and that is the military program. There is nothing that indicates the suspension Iran undertook of its nuclear weapons program in 2003 was anything other than temporary."

For example, while Iran has made rapid progress at developing its uranium-enrichment capability, it has, to date, no capacity to adapt the two-and-a-half tons of enriched material it has so far produced for use in a nuclear reactor. In a civilian program, the enriched uranium would be processed to produce uranium dioxide, which is used in the fuel rods required for nuclear power stations. But Western nuclear experts hav... >>>

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