(NYT) Iran Installs Equipment for Large-Scale Uranium Enrichment

[Roland99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/world/middleeast/03iran.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

International nuclear investigators have confirmed that Iran is beginning to install equipment in the large underground chamber in Natanz, the center where Iranian officials have said they will move to industrial-scale enrichment of uranium, according to foreign diplomats and American officials.

Iran said last year that it planned to install 3,000 centrifuges by this spring at Natanz, as a first step toward putting more than 50,000 of the devices in operation to produce nuclear fuel. But the program has been behind schedule, and based on reports from investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the centrifuges are just now beginning to be assembled.

Nonetheless, the move signals a continued defiance of the Untied Nations Security Council, which demanded last summer that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment. At the White House on Friday, the spokesman for the National Security Council said, “This clearly demonstrates that Iran is not moving to meet the U.N.’s mandate.”

This weekend, ambassadors from several countries are invited by the Iranians to visit the plant at Isfahan, where Iran produces the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges for enrichment. American officials dismissed the invitation as a diplomatic stunt, meant to create a false sense of openness about the program.

Plus with some content in the rest of the article can't help but feel the US is fanning flames hoping something arises out of nothing.

Also, that headline, to me, implies that centrifuges are being installed but that's not the case (as you see later in the article).

[Jawja]

1. So, is David E. Sanger,

the author, the new Judith Miller? :shrug:

[magellan]

2. They haven't even got two cascades of 164 centrifuges each to run in tandem smoothly

That's according to the IAEA, who are watching the pilot program at Natanz. It seems incredibly paranoid and premature to worry about the 3000 they haven't even installed yet, which the IAEA will also have access to.

[LynnTheDem]

3. "UN mandate"? They mean the NON-BINDING REQUEST?

Under the NPT, Iran has the "inalienable right" to nuclear power and the UN had no right to their non-binding request for Iran to suspend enrichment.

Of course the US "dismissed" as a "stunt"; gotta dismiss anything that isn't all war.

[Roland99]

4. 2nd NY Times article suggests activity at Natanz is just for "political showmanship"

Experts say 'frenetic activity' at Iranian enrichment plant may be mostly 'political showmanship'
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/NYT_Experts_say_frenetic_activity_at_0203.html

Further excerpts from Sunday's NY Times article:
#

What the Iranians are not talking about, experts with access to the atomic agency's information say, is that their earlier, experimental effort to make centrifuges work has struggled to achieve even limited success and appears to have been put on the back burner so the country's leaders can declare that they are moving to the next stage.

To enrich uranium on an industrial scale, the machines must spin at incredibly high speeds for months on end. But the latest report of the atomic agency, issued in November, said the primitive machines of the Iran's pilot plant ran only intermittently, to enrich small amounts of uranium. And the Iranians succeeded in setting up just two of the planned six groupings of 164 centrifuges at the pilot plant.

"It looks political unless they've made progress that we don't know about," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a weapons analysis group in London.

....

There also appear to be large doses of domestic political posturing and outright bluffing to Iran's very public declarations. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has become the face of Iranian defiance, is under growing pressure at home because of unemployment and the effect of economic sanctions -- and President Bush's advisers have said he may view a nuclear standoff with the United States as a way to help his standing. That, combined with evidence of problems at the pilot plant, suggest that the industrial push may be aimed as much at enriching Iran's political leverage as enriching uranium.