Iran near nuclear power, US plans to attack

LOS ANGELES – Very soon Iran will have the atomic bomb. The work is far ahead of what has been thought up to now and the country is “moving rapidly and with determination towards acquiring the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons”. This is the conclusion of a long investigation published yesterday by the Los Angeles Times, a work of months in which it is also highlighted how the United States is ready to hit Tehran to block its plans. The Californian newspaper’s work comes at a time when a new mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency has arrived in Iran.

The newspaper managed to have a series of documents covered by secrecy and confirmations by experts, government men and secret services of European and Middle Eastern countries. According to the investigation, there are sufficient indications to conclude that the Iranian nuclear program – which according to the authorities only serves to produce electricity – “hides a plan for the country to become the next nuclear power”.

A confidential report prepared in May by the French government which states that Iran is “surprisingly close” to possessing enriched uranium or plutonium for a bomb is mentioned in the investigation. Furthermore, it is claimed that uranium samples collected in June by the IAEA inspectors gave positive results due to the presence of a sufficient level of enrichment for the production of the weapon. Tehran would have secretly imported nearly two tons of nuclear material from China in 1991, a part of which was turned into metal uranium, which would have no use in a civilian nuclear program but would be essential to weapons production. Iran, writes the newspaper, has hidden research laboratories and material tests of the activities carried out in the past in a factory for the production of watches on the outskirts of Tehran. In June the authorities had prevented access to two Kalaye Electric premises and banned the analysis of samples.

A decisive help in Tehran in approaching the atomic bomb came from Pakistan, which since 1989 would have offered to sell the technology for the production of nuclear weapons. The Pakistani atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Kahn was also involved in the nuclear program. But in Iran – one of the countries that the US administration has included of the “axis of evil” – the secret services have also identified North Korean military scientists and technicians from North Korea – another member of the “axis of evil” – would be so numerous that the Iranian regime would have reserved for them an entire resort on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The program is also attended by Russian scientists, who would travel with false documents and without Moscow’s authorization. They would be engaged in the construction of a special reactor capable of producing the plutonium suitable for the atomic bomb. But in recent months, Iran has also turned to European companies to try to buy devices with which to handle large quantities of radioactive materials, technology for the production of uranium metal and plutonium.

As for the American reaction, foreign intelligence sources quoted by the Los Angeles Times, the Pentagon has already developed an emergency plan to carry out attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities.

August 5, 2003