Britain differs from U.S. view on Iran bomb design

[sabra]

Source: Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - British officials suspect Iran has been seeking nuclear weapons for the past few years, differing from a U.S. view that Tehran halted work on design and weaponisation in 2003, a UK security source said Wednesday.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he had no evidence to back up the British assessment.

The British security source said last week's revelation of a second uranium enrichment plant in Iran only served to support international suspicions about an Iranian cover-up to mask nuclear weapons designs.

A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published in December 2007 judged with high confidence that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003 and had not restarted it as of mid-2007.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE58T2PL20090930

[Ozymanithrax]

1. The Inteligence estimate missed Iran's building a secret

facility. To me, this article highlights more the abysmal state of US Inteligence during the Bush administration.

Building secret enrichment facilities indicates an intention to do something on the sly.

[AverageJoe5]

2. It wasn't a secret facility

Iran didn't have to inform the IAEA about the new facility for about another year (6 months before they put nuclear materials in the facility); since they didn't have to report it now, there was nothing "secret" about the facility. It's much ado about nothing - political posturing by the Obama Administration, France, the U.K., and Israel.

The U.K. intelligence on Iraq's alleged WMD's was spectacularly wrong; so I wouldn't give much credence to U.K. intelligence on Iran's nuclear prgram.

[bananas]

4. Iran had to report it when they began construction

Iran Violated International Obligations on Qom Facility
James M. Acton Proliferation Analysis, September 25, 2009

Update: On 30 September, speaking in New Delhi, the IAEA Director General confirmed that Iran has violated its obligations.<1>

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has said that Iran's new centrifuge facility is "perfectly legal." Here is why he is perfectly wrong.

Iran’s basic safeguards obligations are set out in its Safeguards Agreement (INFCIRC/214). This agreement was ratified by the Iranian parliament and entered into force in May 1974.

Like all others, Iran's Safeguards Agreement sets out general principles. It does not contain the exact details of how safeguards are to be applied. These details are included in much more complex Subsidiary Arrangements, which do not require ratification by national legislatures.

<snip>

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. About this 'secret facility' -

was it in a bunker, 200 feet underground?

If not, why not? If they are serious about a weapons program, wouldn't they put any new facilities in bomb-proof bunkers in light of international hostility and the likelihood of an Israeli air strike against any nuclear weapons facilities?

[bananas]

5. Ploughshares: most likely being built to support a nuclear weapons program

Ploughshares experts weigh in on Iran's nuclear facility
Posted on Sep 28 2009 8:29 am
Image

In an article in the Washington Independent, leading nuclear weapons analysts -- all Ploughshares Fund grantees and president Joe Cirincione -- agreed that the previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Qom is most likely being built to support a nuclear weapons program, but they argue that it is not only the size of the site that leads to that conclusion. Last Friday, President Obama dramatically revealed the existence of the site, with the leaders of Britain and France at his side. Ivanka Barzashka, a nuclear analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, says that “the size of a facility does not determine whether it can or cannot produce weapons-grade, or highly-enriched, uranium." The issue for Barzashka is that the facility makes no economic sense as a nuclear power generator. In a view echoed by Cirincione and James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Barashka says that building a 3,000-centrifuge facility to enrich uranium for nuclear power would most likely take about 90 years to get one year's fuel load. "But if you want for a bomb," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)," then 3,000 is plenty. Two thousand would be enough."

(photo: satellite image of suspected site obtained and analyzed by ISIS)
Read the full article: http://washingtonindependent.com/61063/experts-weigh-in-on-significance-of-irans-nuclear-facility