UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., March 15 (UPI) – Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations has proposed letting an international group, including the United States, own Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Iran could agree that its nuclear facilities, including all of its uranium enrichment plants, could be jointly owned by an international consortium. All countries with concerns, including the U.S., could participate in that consortium,” Ambassador Javid Zarif said in an interview with Time magazine.
“Their people and other foreign nationals could come and go to work at the facilities, which would allow for the best type of monitoring.”
Zarif said the consortium would provide built-in monitoring, which from Iran’s perspective would be less intrusive than inspectors, Time reported.
“It is an issue of respect,” Zarif told Time. “Of course you are monitoring as you do this, but you are doing it with respect as owners and operators.”
The Zarif interview appeared as the U.N. Security Council considered how to respond to Iran’s refusal to halt enrichment of uranium. Iran has said its nuclear program is for energy production, but some countries suspect it is for nuclear weapons production.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
this is nothing new. Iran has been asking the iternational community to come forth and monitor as well as run their nuclear facilities. However,the proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil or any third country only to be shipped later to Iran was not acceptable to the Islamic Republic. This is the point of contention or clash; the West does not want any sort of enrichment to take place on the Iranian soil due to the proliferation risk whereas the Iranians see this as an affront to their soverienty.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Oh garbage. What the world really wants is full disclosure of the items that the IAEA has been requesting and not getting. At this point an enrichment program has been going forward without a reactor. It is not the known facilities that worry people, it is the secret ones, and the IAEA has enough suspicions to raise alarm.
This is just one more stall and delay tactic. The longer Iran keeps the world talking, the closer they get to enrichment. Tick tick tick.....
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Oh garbage. What the world really wants is full disclosure of the items that the IAEA has been requesting and not getting. At this point an enrichment program has been going forward without a reactor. It is not the known facilities that worry people, it is the secret ones, and the IAEA has enough suspicions to raise alarm.
This is just one more stall and delay tactic. The longer Iran keeps the world talking, the closer they get to enrichment. Tick tick tick.....
hmm secret nuclear facilities, as much as I am not an iran fan...I dunno about this secret nuclear facilities business, kinda reminds me of secret nuclear and chemical weapons installations alleged to be in iraq.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Gosh, where could all this secret facility stuff be coming from? Hmmmm? Try this out. In 2002 a group of Iranian dissidents disclosed a massive nuclear project headquartered in Natanz. Later the IAEA inspected the facility, and found it to be a massive undocumented enrichment facility hidden underground.
That sort of makes a credibility problem.
“The representative office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Washington, D.C., revealed on Wednesday, 14 August 2002, two top-secret nuclear sites in Iran and the clerical regime’s new nuclear, biological and chemical weapons projects at a press conference in Washington, DC. On the surface, the Iranian regime’s main nuclear activities are focused on Bushehr’s nuclear power plant, but in reality secret nuclear programs are at work without the knowledge of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). One of these top secret projects is Natanz’s nuclear facility. Natanz is about 100 miles north of Isfahan. The other one is Arak’s atomic facilities. Arak is a city in central Iran, 150 miles south of Tehran.
Two sites, near the cities of Natanz and Arak south of Tehran, appear designed to help produce enriched uranium or plutonium, the fissile material needed for nuclear weapons. Until the facilities were revealed in August 2002 by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian government had not disclosed their existence to the IAEA. Their existence suggests Iran has other secret nuclear facilities.”
Here are some released satellite photos of the plant which was undisclosed to the IAEA:
Is it a wonder that the IAEA does not trust Iran? oooops.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
a credibility problem.
I agree with this part based on my previous post.
Dont get me wrng, I dont trust Iran and I would be happy the day the ayatollahs are over thrown and beaten on streets. But just cuz they are wrong, does not make all the accusations against them credible.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Oh please:
A much-anticipated report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, distributed to governments on 06 June 2003 in advance of a meeting of the agency’s board of governors on 16 June 2003, concluded that Iran has failed to comply with its nuclear safeguards agreement. The IAEA report revealed Iran is building a previously unacknowledged heavy-water research reactor at Arak. That facility could increase Iran’s technological options for the production of nuclear weapons. A 05 May 2003 letter from Iran informed the agency for the first time of its intention to construct a heavy water research reactor, a type often associated with production of plutonium for nuclear weapons programs. One report suggested the reactor would have a power level of 40MW. In the 06 June 2003 IAEA Report, the Agency stated it intended to complete a more thorough expert analysis of the research and development carried out by Iran in the establishment of its enrichment capabilities. This will require Iran to submit a complete chronology of its centrifuge and laser efforts at Natanz.
This is not Dick Cheney, this is the IAEA. Here are pictures of the Arak facility, which look remarkably like the Pakistani facility used to produce Plutonium. Thank you AQ Khan.
Remember, these were the undisclosed facilities that the IAEA had never been informed of. So, once it was announced to the world that Iran had been cheating, what did they do? Well obviously they knew this day would come, as you cannot hide programs of this scale from satellites, and the US did have 40 years or so of tracking similar nuclear facilities in the USSR. Iran simply said, it is our right to do this. Well, it is their right to have a peaceful program, fully inspected by the IAEA. The problem is that if they had built light water programs, no once would be concerned, as the waste byproducts have no military value. Instead, they built heavy water reactors which can be used for weapons, and they kept these secret until they were exposed. Since then they have been working furiously to build new capacity.
Everyday they inch closer to a weapon. If they keep up the stall and delay long enough they will explode a bomb, and we will have one more set of decision makers in the world who can flip a switch and kill millions. Bad for the world.
The real problem is, the majority of Muslims want more nukes because they think it will make them more powerful. What Muslims do not understand is that economics are far more powerful than a bomb, and that chaos is always close to the surface. See Islamabad. See the collapse of the USSR.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Its all posturing by Iran to get more time.
I have always maintained that American policy on nuclear weapons is bigoted and basically a mockery of common sense. I believe every sovereign country in the world has (and should have) a right to develop any kind of weapons they chose. America has the right. No one questions that. So no one should question others' too.
Due to matters of practicality, when it comes to nuclear weapons, all countries who want to have them must do it as an extremely covert program. If they get brow-beaten early (e.g. Libya) or have inadequate security (e.g. Iraq), its end of the road for them. And if you are able to resist pressure and end up with a successful bomb then the pressure is released (e.g. India and Pakistan).
Looking at the tremendous pressure Pakistan had to endure from mid-70's all the way to May 1998 when they successfully tested their nuclear program (sanctions, law suits, resolutions etc), I salute the persistence of decision-makers in Pakistan who stood firm in their commitment and all the nuclear scientists who made it possible. Bravo!
No, Ohioguy, its not about the bomb. Its about sovereignty and equal rights for all countries. Once you get off the high horse of "some countries are more equal than the others" then you will also understand this. Till then we can continue going round in circles about "covert Iranian facilities" and IAEA and "credible intelligence" and "Iranian dissidents" yada yada yada.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
Iran faces major trust deficit on account of its secret facilities in Natanz and Arak that were disclosed much later. The work has been going on for the past 18 years or so on this front. Anyhow, Iranians have defended that right under some article IV of NPT, I believe. Anyways, now at this moment its more about the number of centrifuges and their subsequent operation at the above mentioned facilities thats taking time. If Iranians are able to have a set number of workable machines (the centrifuges) then enrichment won't take long.
Iran has installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges each in its underground nuclear plant, laying a basis for full-scale enrichment of uranium and upping the stakes in a standoff with the West, European diplomats said yesterday.
The cascades were to be test-run shortly, without uranium feedstock inside, and fuel material would then be added if the tests were successful, they said.
The 328 centrifuges would be the vanguard of 3,000 planned for installation in the coming months. Firing up the cascades would dramatically sharpen Iran’s confrontation with Western powers that pushed through limited UN sanctions on Tehran six weeks ago to try to curb what they suspect is a disguised effort to assemble atomic bombs.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
OG so we listen to IAEA and Un when it suitsus and not when it does not?
btw thank you for drawing a distinction between Cheney and IAEA. Is your argument now that IAEA is credible, and Cheney is/was not?
please clarify :)
PS: I am in full favour of some good ol ass kicking of the ayotollahs, but lets just do it right this time.. please
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
PS: I am in full favour of some good ol ass kicking of the ayotollahs,
Fraudia, you do realize, I am sure, that "Ayatollah" is a sacred religious institution of shias and your repeated insistence of kicking their arses, while understandable in the situation, can rub some people the wrong way.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
There ought to be a nuclear power in West Asia, enuff said. I think even our (Pakistan's) stand towards the Iranian resolve to go nuclear albiet for peaceful purposes has mellowed down over the years. Look at Britain and its bid to replace the trident. The French, they were not embarrassed about the threat they issued about using nuclear weapons in retaliation to any attack on their territory last year.
So, its would be natural if Iran decides to take the same course.
Re: Iran Offers The Ownership Of Its Nuclear Facilities
No, Ohioguy, its not about the bomb. Its about sovereignty and equal rights for all countries. Once you get off the high horse of "some countries are more equal than the others" then you will also understand this.
Well, there you have it. Nuclear weapons are a matter of public pride. The Muslims world is thinking with it's groin. How many government changes has Iran gone through in the past 50 years? (Or Pakistan for that matter). Did you trust all of those regimes with the lives of your kids, grandchildren, great grandchildren?
Because nobody thought that the USSR would collapse either. Nobody thought that the Russain government would run out of money to guard thousands of nuclear weapons, or that some of them might go missing. I just hope they go missing in Karachi or Islamabad. We are talking about a whole different order of chaos that whacking some lawyers in the streets.
You guys figure Israel has nukes, India has nukes, the West has nukes, why not us?The answer is, that the region, and your countries are unstable. The more unstable the country the higher the risk to the world of a chain reaction of events. Mushy is at best a benign dictator. But he is one heartbeat away from the grave. Then what? And the Mullahs, do you trust them? Which way does the fallout blow from Tehran? Not my neighborhood, but it might be yours.
When countries are stable and responsible they can have equal rights. Anything less than that puts us all at risk. The Mullahtocracy is not stable and responsible, and may never be. End of discussion.
Might as well give a gun to your kid, toddlers have equal rights eh?