http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6839865
Quote:
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran obtained weapons-grade uranium and a design for a nuclear bomb from a Pakistani scientist who has admitted to selling nuclear secrets abroad, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Wednesday.
The group, that has given accurate information before, also said Iran is secretly enriching uranium at a military site previously unknown to the U.N., despite promising France, Britain and Germany that it would halt all such work.
"(Abdul Qadeer) Khan gave Iran a quantity of HEU (highly enriched uranium) in 2001, so they already have some," Farid Soleiman, a senior spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told reporters.
"I would doubt it was given enough for a weapon," he added.
Soleiman said Khan, who ran a global nuclear black market that supplied Libya and Iran with uranium-enrichment technology until it was shut down earlier this year, also gave Iran a Chinese-developed warhead design sometime between 1994 and 1996.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that Khan's network gave Libya the bomb design. It has been trying to find out whether Iran got the design as well, but has no proof that Tehran acquired it.
Diplomats in Vienna who follow the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, say the NCRI has been the best source of information on Tehran's previously undeclared nuclear program.
The NCRI is the political wing of the exiled group known as the People's Mujahideen Organization. Both are listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations.
Soleiman said that Iran was enriching uranium, a process of purifying it for use as fuel for power plants or bombs, at a site in northeastern Tehran as part of a continuing covert program to develop nuclear weapons.
"It continues to enrich uranium as we speak," Soleiman said.
Iran first pledged in October last year to suspend all uranium enrichment activities in a bid to allay fears it is seeking a bomb. It promised on Sunday to extend the scope of the freeze, sparing it a referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
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ENRICHMENT SITE
Soleiman said the enrichment site, called the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology, was run by the defense ministry and located in Lavizan, near a site where the United States suspects Iran conducted secret nuclear work before demolishing all the buildings and carting off the rubble.
He said the NCRI sent the IAEA a letter about the new site a few days ago.
Iran told France, Britain and Germany on Sunday it would freeze all activities related to enrichment while the two sides negotiate a permanent deal on Iran's nuclear program. This will protect Iran from being referred to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA board of governors meets on Nov. 25.
The NCRI, like Washington, accuses the Iranian government of using its nuclear power program as a front to develop atomic weapons. Tehran dismisses this allegation, insisting its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.
The IAEA said in a new report on its two-year investigation of Iran's nuclear program that Iran had not diverted any of its declared nuclear materials to a weapons program, but did not rule out the possibility secret atomic activities existed.
The NCRI established its reputation as a nuclear whistleblower in August 2002 when it said the Islamic republic had not declared a massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak. The allegation was later confirmed and Iran declared the facilities to the IAEA.
Since then, the NCRI has disclosed several sites linked to Tehran's nuclear program, including once connected with uranium enrichment.
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They have bomb-grade uranium and I have little doubt that they would be afraid to use it if threatened. I don't know if we'd be the ones hit, but Israel is probably right in their crosshairs. They wouldn't even have to get it all the way here, a suicide attack with a small bomb on a powered boat against our fleet in the gulf is also a worrying prospect. There's also the possiblity that they could hit Iraq's new government or an occupied city like Fallujah. The list of targets is practically endless, and a few radicals in the military could decide to strike, as I doubt they have the same precautions that we do here in the US, which have also been proven to be not fully effective.
The WMD's are right there. Maybe this time there is a case for military action. If we don't do it, I don't think I can fault Israel for concluding that they should to based on our precedent. Let's hope that the UN grows some balls and puts its collective foot down before they get an operational nuke. There's no end in sight for US membership in the UN, so I think we should make a big deal about it.
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Or maybe this opposition group has built up their credibility and fed us a false report in the hope that we'll do something about the current Iranian government.