Does Iran have more Secret Nuclear Facilities?

by Yoni Hirsch, The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Former IAEA official Olli Heinonen tells Wall Street Journal that Iran may have already passed the point of no return in its nuclear program • Heinonen says if Iran decides to assemble a nuclear weapon, it will do so faster than the international community can respond.

Iran's heavy-water facility in Arak. | Photo credit: AP

Does Iran have a second secret plutonium production facility? In an interview published in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Olli Heinonen, who until 2010 was the deputy head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the same source who in 2003 revealed the uranium enrichment facility in Fordo also said that Iran was secretly building a duplicate of the Arak heavy-water facility designed to produce plutonium.

The source was correct about Fordo, but his credibility on the other claim is not known.

Heinonen, with 27 years of experience in the field, said that he never encountered a nuclear program that wasn't trying to hide something. 

"If you go back to the nuclear programs which have been revealed [elsewhere], they all came with a surprise," he said.

Moreover, Heinonen suggested that an Iranian nuclear weapon was not a question of technological capability, but rather desire on the part of Iran. He said that it is possible that Iran has already passed the point of no return and that years of mistakes by the IAEA played a role in that. According to him, the IAEA developed "Stockholm Syndrome" (the phenomenon in which hostages identify with their kidnappers) regarding the Iranians.

Although he appreciates the IAEA's professionalism, Heinonen does not fully understand the IAEA's conduct on the Iranian nuclear issue. Former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was criticized for being too soft on Iran, but Heinonen said the problems began with Iran at the start of the 1990s, before ElBaradei's term. He said that inspectors visited Iran in 1993 and 1994 and uncovered secret laboratories but reported that everything was okay and the IAEA remained silent for three years. 

The present, according to Heinonen, is more concerning than the past. If Iran decides to assemble a nuclear weapon, it will do so faster than the international community can respond. Heinonen explained that IAEA inspectors visit Iran only once every two weeks and that any discovery by inspectors would take a month to reach the U.N. Security Council. "During that one month [Iran] may have achieved their goal, at least to have enough high-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon," Heinonen said. 

Heinonen said Iran going nuclear would set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, as part of which Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries would seek their own nuclear weapons capabilities. 

But, despite everything, Heinonen still believes there is a chance for an agreement with Iran.

Meanwhile, the present head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog called on Iran on Monday to give his inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military site, where they suspect explosives tests relevant to nuclear weapons development may have taken place.

"Providing access to the Parchin site would be a positive step which would help to demonstrate Iran's willingness to engage with the agency on the substance of our concerns," Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a speech to the IAEA's governing board.

Iran's nuclear chief said his country has produced more than 3,000 advanced centrifuges which are used to enrich uranium.

The semiofficial Fars news agency on Sunday quoted Fereidoun Abbasi as saying that the old generation of IR-1 centrifuges will be phased out soon. Iran has more than 12,000 IR-1 centrifuges enriching uranium at its main Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

Abbasi said last month that Iran has begun installing the newer IR-2 centrifuges, which can produce more enriched uranium in a shorter period of time. He says the production line of the new, advanced centrifuges has been completed, but he did not elaborate.

The U.S. and its allies fear that Iran may eventually be able to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge Iran denies.

Yoni Hirsch, The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=7699

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