Iranians gather at Azadi (freedom) square to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, as they carry a placard in support of Iran’s nuclear technology in Tehran February 11, 2006.
REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
Iran continues to treat us like suckers because we behave like suckers born every minute:
“I made it quite clear that when they argue that their nuclear facilities are genuinely for peaceful purposes the burden of proof is on their side,” he said.
Ahmadinejad said Friday his country has complied with requirements to inform the IAEA six months before a new enrichment facility becomes operational, and was giving 18 months notice.
Iran has agreed to allow the IAEA to inspect the new facility. At the news conference Tuesday, Ban was asked why he didn’t wait for the U.N. nuclear agency to issue its report, as Ahmadinejad said.
“To be transparent and credible, when you have such an intent to build facilities, they should have informed _ notified the IAEA long time before, not just before everything would be completed,” Ban replied.
“That’s what I’m raising. So there is a question of transparency. That is why the world leaders have expressed their deep concern and that is why I have also expressed my concern,” he said.
“I urged him that Iran as (a) historically rich and proud country should take the constructive role in the international community by making very transparent and directly involvement and engagement in negotiations to prove all the pending issues,” Ban said.
The secretary-general said he was following up his meeting with Ahmadinejad with a meeting later Tuesday with Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
“I sincerely hope that all these questions pertaining this new facility and other facilities _ all the pending issues concerning nuclear development programs of Iran should be resolved through dialogue in a transparent and objective manner with (the) international atomic agency involved,” he said.
*Groan*…why do we insist on being played like a violin?
Last week in wake of the disclosure of Iran’s “secret” “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility”, Curt linked to this sentence in the WaPo:
President Barack Obama reiterated that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it takes steps to prove its aspirations are peaceful.
“Prove its aspirations are peaceful”?!
Nima Gerami and James M. Acton at Foreign Policy spell it out:
the evidence that the new facility is part of a military program is compelling. According to unclassified U.S. government talking points, the clandestine facility near Qom is “intended to hold approximately 3,000 centrifuges” of an unknown type. In 2007, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, then head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said that Iran’s target was to have 50,000 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. This number was needed to make “meaningful amounts of nuclear fuel” for one or two commercial-scale power plants to generate electricity.
Thus, by Iran’s own admission, the Qom facility is too small for civilian purposes. It is not, however, too small to produce meaningful amounts of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapons program.
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