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| Suggestions of Iran nuclear sabotage | ||
| 2010-07-24 | ||
As Iran continues to defy international sanctions, western security analysts say the country is making progress towards the ability to test a nuclear bomb in the next few years. But a series of recent reverses, notably affecting Iran's ability to enrich uranium, is prompting debate over whether the programme is being undermined by sabotage, sanctions, or the incompetence of the regime's scientists. In the past year, a dramatic reduction has taken place in the number of centrifuges enriching uranium at the regime's nuclear plant in Natanz.
Iran also appears to be having difficulties on other fronts. Ivan Oelrich, of the Federation of American Scientists, said the centrifuges were only working at 20 per cent efficiency. The latest IAEA report says that 4,592 centrifuges are installed at Natanz -- but are sitting idle and doing nothing at all. Some security analysts see this as evidence of covert sabotage by western intelligence agencies. "There are signs that there has been a concerted intelligence operation which is able to debilitate and set back the Iranian programme," says one academic, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is not foolproof. But a large number of Iranian centrifuges have crashed and up to half have had to be replaced in recent times. This success didn't happen entirely accidentally." Others are less willing to give western intelligence total credit. "Nothing we know can rule out sabotage and clearly something fishy is going on," says Mr Oelrich. "But just because there is sabotage does not rule out the possibility that the Iranians are also grossly incompetent." Leading analysts believe western agencies have been trying to sabotage the programme for some time. "The UK, the US, the Israelis all want to get companies to help them put bogus equipment into the programme," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Faulty parts Perhaps the best-known of the alleged attempts to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme came in 2006, when power supplies at the enrichment facility in Natanz blew up, writes James Blitz. The blast destroyed no fewer than 50 centrifuges. Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, then head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, said later that the equipment had been "manipulated". There have been other examples. A Swiss company that provided Iran with spare parts for its enrichment programme is reported to have been persuaded by the CIA to introduce defective elements. In 2004, the New York Times reported that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency stumbled upon vacuum pumps at Natanz that had been cleverly damaged so they did not work properly. In June 2008, an Iranian businessman was sentenced to death for allegedly supplying defective equipment to the nuclear programme. No details were given of what the equipment was. But an Iranian counter-intelligence official said the incident did irreversible damage. Mr Albright said Iran was vulnerable to this kind of sabotage because it needed to import equipment from abroad, often through shady middlemen who help the regime defy international sanctions. "The Iranians really don't make that much; they don't make vacuum pumps, they don't make valves, they don't reverse engineer that well," he said. "So western suppliers are critical." Michael Adler, an expert on Iran's nuclear programme at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, said intelligence agencies actively exploited this reliance on imports. "[They] trace the procurement patterns, they find people shipping, say, a vacuum pump for a centrifuge. Then they put in a gremlin. The thing about centrifuges is that they operate in cascades. So when one goes down, you get a domino effect." However, these experts, offer a word of caution. They say that Iran faces other problems that would explain the setbacks. For example, its scientists are still using old centrifuges -- called P1s and P2s -- which were first employed decades ago. "It is hardly surprising these break down," said Mr Adler, "especially given the regime's ambitions for speedy success". Others argue that the scope for sabotage has been much reduced because Iran has acquired computer systems that allow it to produce its own numerically generated parts for the enrichment programme. These systems, originally designed for car production lines, can also be used to build equipment for uranium enrichment. Iran insists talk of sabotage is western propaganda. "I strongly deny Iran's nuclear programme is sabotaged. This is a media war to suggest the Islamic Republic is dependent on foreign help," says Kazem Jalali, a member of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and national security committee. "Our nuclear programme is 100 per cent localised. We do not need to stretch our hands to the world markets." | ||
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 I hear double agent guy might be a triple agent. If I was you, I'd check that out. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-07-24 15:23 |
| #2 Nope, it was sabotage. Some guy named 'Mahmoud'. Don't know his last name but you'll want to interrogate all of them ... |
| Posted by: Steve White 2010-07-24 15:21 |
| #1 I strongly deny Iran's nuclear programme is sabotaged Nope, these are indigenous screw-ups. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-07-24 14:58 |