The Chicago Tribune reports today that the Iranian nuclear plant cited by the Bush team as evidence of a weapons facility was provided to Iran as a gift in the 1960s as part of the US Cold War strategy. The US provided the reactor and the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facility, which became the building block or foundation for Iran’s nuclear program today that has also received assistance from other countries, like Russia. This fuel remains in Iran and “could be used to help make nuclear arms.” Located in Tehran, the Tehran Research Reactor is one of Iran’s “most important nuclear facilities” and is the facility where “scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs.”
While Bush pursues and attacks other countries, persons and groups for providing material support to terrorists or axis-of-evil regimes, this revelation “sheds light on the degree to which the United States has been complicit in Iran developing those capabilities.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency or UN nuclear watchdog has not found proof that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. However, Iran’s nuclear activities which have been shielded from UN inspectors have taken place in this US-donated reactor, including experiments with uranium, according to IAEA records. While the Bush team points to these activities as evidence Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, they fail to mention the US role in providing the reactor and uranium that permit Iran to engage in these activities.
The US has failed to also inform the public of evidence that the Iranian research program may be “more troubled than previously known.” Bush characterizes the Iranian nuclear program as “a sophisticated operation that has skillfully hid its true mission of making the bomb. But in the case of the Tehran Research Reactor, a study by a top Iranian scientist suggests otherwise.”
After a serious accident in 2001 at the U.S.-supplied reactor, the scientist concluded that poor quality control at the facility was a “chronic disease.” Problems included carelessness, sloppy bookkeeping and a staff so poorly trained that workers had a weak understanding of “the most basic and simple principles of physics and mathematics,” according to the study, presented at an international nuclear conference in 2004 in France.
The public has also not been informed about the weapons-grade uranium that the US provided to Iran:
“Another overlooked concern about the Tehran reactor is the weapons-grade fuel the U.S. provided Iran in the 1960s–about 10 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the most valuable material to bombmakers. It is still at the reactor and susceptible to theft, U.S. scientists familiar with the situation said.
This uranium has already been burned in the reactor, but the “spent fuel” is still highly enriched and could be used in a bomb. Normally, spent fuel is so radioactive that terrorists could not handle it without causing themselves great harm. But the spent fuel in Iran has sat in storage for so long that it is probably no longer highly radioactive and could be handled easily, the U.S. scientists say.
The fuel is about one-fifth the amount needed to make a nuclear weapon, but experts said it could be combined with other material to construct a bomb.
The US would now like to retrieve the US-supplied fuel.
While the US public has remained in the dark until now about this little gift, the world has known, and this gift is one reason why Russia has not bowed to US demands that it stop assisting Iran to build a nuclear power plant:
That role has complicated U.S. efforts to gain support for greater restrictions on Iran. For instance, the U.S. wants Russia to take a firmer stance on Iran’s nuclear program and has been critical of Russian efforts to help Iran build a nuclear power plant.
But Russia has noted the U.S. had no problem providing Iran a research reactor and highly enriched uranium when it was politically expedient.
It is also interesting that when the US provided this nuclear reactor to Iran, the US did not question Iran’s motive of needing nuclear power when it had such enormous oil reserves, a motive that today the US rejects:
In the 1960s, the U.S. provided Iran its first nuclear research reactor. Despite Iran’s enormous oil reserves, the shah wanted to build numerous nuclear power reactors, which American and other Western companies planned to supply.
Yet today, the U.S. argues that Iran does not need to develop nuclear power because of those same petroleum resources.
This story becomes even more interesting due to a new tactic by the Bush team in its “war on terror.” The US is warning world banks to not handle money for North Korea or Iran or they may in the future face the risk of the same stigma associated with banks linked to Nazi Germany:
“You don’t want to be the one ten years from now who’s got (Korean leader) Kim Jong Il’s money,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey said in an interview with Reuters.
“(It’s) just like we saw during the (former US President Bill) Clinton administration when they exposed the Nazi banks,” Levey said. Swiss banks were embarrassed in 1997 by revelations that the German government had passed funds through the Swiss National Bank and other Swiss banks during World War II to finance the Nazi war effort.
“You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that. I think banks understand that. I just don’t know whether they are taking all the steps that they can and we would encourage them to do it,” he said.
The Bush team views the “US strategy of naming institutions and individuals it believes are helping finance illicit activity” as an “effective upgrade of the traditional economic sanctions approach.” So, the US is warning banks to not “be on the wrong side” of handling financial transactions for axis-of-evil countries, but it is ok for the US to provide the reactor and weapons-grade uranium to Iran?