Ayatollahs' quest for nuclear weapons
Fox News, April 4, 2008
Transcript
For the past seven years, the
war on terrorism has been the focal point of U.S. foreign
policy. Questions on how that policy should or could have
been pursued arouse strident debate, but there is no
disagreement about the urgency of the threat. Nor is there
any dispute that the worst-case scenario would be a
nuclear-armed state-sponsor of terrorism. So it is no
surprise that there has been no let up in the international
scrutiny of the Iranian regime, a documented state-sponsor
of terror that candidly declares “nuclear capability is our
undeniable right.” Of late, however, there have been
questions about what the ayatollahs are doing, and when they
are doing it.
CIA Director Michael Hayden on Sunday became the third major
Bush administration official to assert that Iran has been
pursuing a nuclear weapons program all along. Echoing
statements made by President Bush and Vice President Cheney,
Hayden told NBC's Meet the Press: “Why would the Iranians be
willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing
to pay for what they're doing now if they did not have, at a
minimum… the desire to keep the option open to develop a
nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they've
already decided to do that?”
Critics were quick to point to December's National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which declared with “high
confidence” that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear
weapons program.” But the director of National Intelligence,
Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, appeared to disavow the NIE
conclusion in congressional testimony in early February.
McConnell said the wording of an unclassified version of the
Estimate released to the public had been careless. “So if
I'd had until now to think about it, I probably would have
changed a thing or two.”
Apparently, the Brits would have changed a thing or two, as
well. On March 5, the British government joined in the fray.
A senior British diplomat claimed there was no serious
evidence that Iran's efforts to build a nuclear weapon had
halted: "I haven't seen any intelligence that gives me even
medium confidence that these programmes haven't resumed.
It's an uncertain picture." His comments appeared to reflect
the findings of an independent British assessment of
intelligence on Iran's nuclear program, completed after the
American assessment was published.
For one thing, the NIE's authors noted that in deciding
whether Iran was in fact pursuing a nuclear weapons program,
they did not consider the uranium conversion and enrichment
activities Iran declared to be for “civilian purposes.” That
is almost laughable. Tehran's entire modus operandi is
concealment, via shell companies or “civilian” enrichment
projects.
In a news conference in Brussels on February 20, Mohammad
Mohaddessin, the Chairman of the NCRI's Foreign Affairs
Committee, announced that in April 2007, the Iranian
regime's nuclear project had entered a new phase. A command
and control center, known as Mojdeh site, had been
established to head up the drive to complete a nuclear bomb.
Many of the activities at the site are disguised as part of
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps'(IRGC) Malek Ashtar
University.
Plenty of other information indicates that ayatollahs'
regime has in fact expedited its nuclear weapons activities,
and that the IRGC has assumed command of a much larger
segment of the nuclear drive. As the NCRI revealed, the
Mojdeh site in Tehran, houses a vast research and
development facility where scientists are experimenting with
neutron initiators and triggers for an atomic bomb; casting
and machining of uranium metals; and researching fissile
material needed for the production of a bomb, among others
activities. At Khojir, a Defense Ministry site 72 miles
southeast of Tehran, researchers are working on building a
nuclear warhead. None of these activities is necessary for
nuclear power generation. In his latest speech at the NATO
leaders' summit in the Romanian capital on April 2nd,
President Bush reiterated that "Iran is pursuing technology
that could be used to produce nuclear weapons."
The reasons why become obvious in the context of the
ayatollahs' overall domestic and foreign policies. On March
14, engineered parliamentary elections handed the reins of
power to the most militant, suppressive faction. The
politico-military faction represented by the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps top brass and veteran commanders
took control, as all pretences at “reformist vs. hardliners”
were thrown out the window. The day after, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad described the vote as "safeguarding the right to
acquire nuclear energy with exemplary prowess."
Meanwhile, on the western border with Iraq, intelligence
reports reveal another escalation in the terrorist meddling
of the ayatollahs, again spearheaded by the IRGC. Primarily
carried out through the IRGC's notorious Qods Force, the
political-military buildup by Tehran's mullahs is targeting
not just the south, but the heart of Iraq, via a new command
and control HQ at Kermanshah.
Last year, of course, the IRGC was “specially designated
global terrorists” — the first time a branch of a national
military has been deemed as such by the White House.
In this context, the IRGC's predominant role in the nuclear
drive puts to rest any of Tehran's excuses about a
“civilian” nuclear program. Its rise to unprecedented power
in virtually all aspects of the regime does away with any
pretences of civil society. The mullahs are building the
bomb, as quickly as possible, as part of a broader
militarization of their entire regime. Lacking domestic
support (most seats were won by a vote of less than 10
percent of eligible voters, even according to inflated
official figures), the clerical regime must bolster itself
somehow. If Tehran joins the nuclear club, it will become a
powerhouse in the region, making it much harder to
discourage from international terrorism and domestic
repression. A nuclear bomb will also bolster the morale of
the hated IRGC, the key means to the repressive regime's
staying power.
In a word, if they are not stopped, we are looking at a
nuclear-armed state-sponsor of terrorism. That is a scary
prospect. Washington needs to recognize this fact, with
finality, and implement a shift in policy. The restrictions
and embargoes currently in place are a good start, but
Washington also needs to put the ayatollahs on notice that a
nuclear-armed Tehran is not an acceptable option. The right
policy would heighten international pressure and sanctions
on the Iranian regime, while recognizing that there is deep,
widespread popular hostility to the ayatollahs. The Rt. Hon.
Lord David Charles Waddington, former home secretary of the
United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote
in the Washington Times this week that the U.S. would "do
well to look at the MEK, which has the means and the will to
bring about change in Iran, as a solution to this entire
crisis."
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
