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Iran has broken seals on uranium enrichment centrifuges
EFLIran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons. Tehran's move, disclosed to the Daily Telegraph yesterday by Western sources, breaks a deal with European countries under which Iran suspended "all uranium enrichment activity." It will also exacerbate fears that the regional power is determined to make an atomic bomb within a few years. A few years? We're lucky if we have that long... America has in recent weeks renewed its call for Iran to be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. Diplomats said senior officials from the "EU-3'' — Britain, France, and Germany — would try to coax Tehran back to the path of co-operation at a secret meeting in Paris on Thursday. Their chances of success seem slim because Tehran appears to have calculated that America is paralyzed by the presidential election campaign and that Europe is too divided to exert real pressure. Read: they know Kerry can be bamboozled as easily as the "Tehran three". Western sources said Iranian officials last month reclaimed equipment for uranium enrichment centrifuges sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The centrifuges separate the fissile isotope U235. In what may be a further escalation, some Western sources said Iran was carrying out its threat to begin producing uranium hexafluoride, the gas fed into the centrifuges, but the claim could not immediately be corroborated. So it's time for another cycle of (1) empty promises... Under a deal reached with the EU-3 in October, Iran agreed to come clean about its nuclear program and announced it would suspend "temporarily'' all uranium enrichment as a confidence-building measure. then (2) brazen repudiation: Angered by the IAEA's condemnation last month of repeated failures to reveal all about its nuclear program, Hassan Rowhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, wrote to the EU-3 saying his country would resume the manufacture, assembly, and testing of centrifuges. "Angered", right. Gotta be careful. Let 'em do just what they want or... they'll do just what they want. Posted by: someone 2004-07-27 |
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