Iran - new nuclear revelation

US, France and Britain threaten more sanctions

Article published on the 2009-09-25 Latest update 2009-09-25 15:30 TU

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
(Photo: Reuters)

France joined the UK and the US in warning Iran that it faces more sanctions after Tehran revealed on Friday that it has been building a second secret uranium enrichment facility. The revelation comes only days before renewed six-party talks are scheduled to discuss increased sanctions on Iran to dissuade it from developing a nuclear weapon.

US President Barack Obama said that the plant meant  that the country has more capacity than it needs for peaceful nuclear projects. US officials say that the reactor is "the right size" for military use.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed their call for an explanation of Tehran's motives.

"On 21 September, Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country," International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Marc Vidricaire said in a statement.

No sooner had the statement been made public than the condemnation began. The United Nations, France and the IAEA have all condemned Iran for keeping the construction secret. US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a joint statement on the issue on Friday.

The West accuses Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons but Tehran insists its activities are entirely peaceful.

Daniel Plesch, a nuclear weapons specialist at the University of London, told RFI that Iran’s actions are clearly in violation of UN Security Council requirements.

“Whether or not this was going to be put into the public domain by western intelligence is really not the key point,” he says. “Really the point is what is the international community going to do about Iran and of course the 800 lb gorilla in the room is Israel, and Israel’s nuclear weapons.

“I think for most people in the region one needs to have a regional solution to the problem with Iran and the failure of the international community to have any regionally-based approach I think leads one towards an inexorable and disastrous military confrontation with Iran.”

He says that the call for sanctions will not meet with universal approval.

“The problem is the Chinese and the Russians don’t agree,” he said. “The western media just say the Russians and the Chinese are unreasonable but the Russians and the Chinese actually represent a broad swathe of international opinion. Of course there is the real threat hanging over people that at some point will, as it were fire ‘Auschwitz’ at Tel Aviv – that is the nightmare and that is what the Americans or the Israelis will use to go after Iran.”

Just a day earlier, an exiled opposition movement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said it had learned of two previously unknown sites in and near Tehran that are being used to build nuclear warheads.

"We revealed the existence of one site and one centre, which are
involved in the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons programme," the movement's spokesperson, Shahin Gobadi told RFI on Thursday.

He claimed to have received the information from sources in the country and added, "These two centres and sites are engaged in the
weaponisation part of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme."

So far, Iran has been known to have only one uranium enrichment plant in operation, in Natanz.

The existence of Natanz, too, was long concealed by Iran, until the National Council of Resistance of Iran blew the whistle in 2002.

The IAEA was not able to provide information about how long the second site has been under construction or how long ago it was planned.