Tehran's Nuclear Defiance Hand-in-hand with Attacks in Iraq
Fox News, May 30, 2008
Transcript
The ayatollahs’ co-policies of
nuclear defiance and aggression in Iraq were on display on
Monday. According to reports from Iraq, in a sinister plot
hatched at Tehran’s Baghdad embassy by Qods Force
commander-turned-ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Tehran’s
proxies launched a missile attack against Ashraf city, the
residence of the main Iranian opposition movement, the
People’s Mojahedin (PMOI/MEK). The Iranian-made missiles
were engraved with the Persian date of manufacture
“24-5-1384,” which corresponds to August 15, 2005.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported. Residents of Ashraf
enjoy “protected person” status under the Fourth Geneva
Convention and are under the protection of Multinational
Force-Iraq. The attack was a flagrant violation of
International Law.
Meanwhile in Vienna, the much anticipated International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program
is out and it is damning. The UN nuclear watchdog indicated
that Tehran was withholding information critical to
determining the true nature of its nuclear program.
More importantly, the report stated that Tehran, in absolute
defiance of the will of the international community embodied
in three consecutive UN Security Council resolutions, has
refused to suspend uranium enrichment. The nine-page report,
due to be discussed by the IAEA's board of governors at a
June 2-6 meeting in Vienna, said that "Iran has not provided
the Agency with all the information, access to documents and
access to individuals necessary to support Iran's
statements" that its activities are purely peaceful in
intent.
Suspicious of Tehran’s clandestine weapons activities, the
IAEA added that "Clarification of these is critical to an
assessment of the nature of Iran's past and present nuclear
program." Indicating the regime’s failure to provide the
IAEA with “substantial explanations” about its suspected
research into nuclear weapons, the agency bluntly accused it
of a “willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering
allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more
for military use than for energy generation,” according to
the New York Times.
The IAEA report also contends that Iran is building more
advanced centrifuges mainly produced by the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), for uranium enrichment.
The agency’s frustration with Tehran’s stonewalling and
evasiveness, only thinly disguised in the report, centers on
a set of 18 documents based on intelligence provided by
different sources, which strongly point to a robust and
ongoing nuclear weapons program.
The IAEA reported that it had not been permitted by Tehran
to inspect several sites in April, where centrifuge
components were being manufactured. Iran's work on "high
explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle project
remained a matter of serious concern." Documents indicated
that Tehran was working on construction of an underground
site that could be used to test fire nuclear bombs. In
addition, the Agency said Tehran possessed diagrams on
molding uranium metal into the shape of warheads.
The latest IAEA report corroborated bombshell revelations by
Mohammad Mohaddessin of the National Council of Resistance
of Iran (NCRI), that, the Iranian regime's nuclear project
had entered a new phase in April 2007. The Chairman of the
NCRI's Foreign Affairs Committee told a press conference in
Brussels in February that 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 other
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.
The mullahs are building the bomb, as quickly as possible,
as part of a broader militarization of their expansionist
regime. Lacking domestic support, the clerical regime
intends to bolster itself somehow. If Tehran joins the
nuclear club, it will become a powerhouse in the region
which, as the latest attack on Ashraf and the outbreak of
unrest in Lebanon indicate, is already reeling from
Tehran-instigated bloodshed. A nuclear bomb will also
bolster the morale of the hated IRGC, the key means to the
repressive regime's staying power.
If they are not stopped, we are looking at a nuclear-armed
state-sponsor of terrorism with an aggressive agenda that
extends beyond neighboring Iraq. Washington needs to
recognize this fact, with finality. The restrictions and
sanctions currently in place are a good start, but a growing
number of Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle
believe that sanctions should be coupled with political
pressure. They maintain that Washington should reach out to
Iran’s main democratic opposition. The continued
blacklisting of the opposition has only undermined the war
on real terrorists and their paymasters in Tehran,
emboldening them in their nuclear drive and violent
intervention in Iraq.
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.
