Tehran's decision to start further enriching uranium makes one
increasingly doubtful that Iran is sincere when claiming that it seeks to allay
the world community's concerns about the nature of its nuclear programme. This
comes in a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry in response to the Iranian
authorities' latest moves.
Iran has got down to enriching its uranium to 20%. To that end, Iran has built
a cascade of gas centrifuges to separate isotopes. The cascade can turn out up
to 5 kilos of enriched uranium every month for the Tehran research reactor to consume. Iran's Foreign
Ministry points out that the latest decision does in no way imply that the
Islamic Republic forgoes an exchange of its reduced-enrichment uranium for the
fuel that's enriched to 20%. Iran
has three options, namely to buy nuclear fuel abroad, exchange its low-enriched
uranium for such fuel or produce the fuel inside the country. None of the three
rules out the others, says the Iranian Foreign Ministry in its statement.
Last autumn the IAEA suggested that Iran should ship about 70% of its low-enriched
uranium to Russia for further enrichment and then take it to France, where
nuclear rods would be made. But Tehran
is still opposed to the plan. Iran
is clearly dragging its feet on the talks, claims the Chief Research Officer of
the International Security Centre at Russia's
Institute of World Economy and International
Relations Vladimir Dvorkin. According to him, uranium enrichment to 20% brings Iran closer to
the development of nuclear weapons.
It is safe to claim, Vladimir Dvorkin says, that Iran has approached to
the development of nuclear weapons by as many years as all the exhaustive
negotiation process has been on. The situation that's taken shape and Iran's
rapid manufacturing of extended-range missiles may finally cause Israel's
patience to wear thin, especially given that president Ahmadinejad continually
threatens to wipe the Jewish State off the map. Israeli aircraft will then
deliver strikes at Iran's
nuclear facilities. Iran
will certainly retaliate. And then the United
States should interfere by definition, to defend its ally
Israel.
This will destabilize the situation in the Middle East
and far beyond.
The United States and the West in general see a nuclear Iran as
unacceptable. For the time being the Untied
States and its European allies are
prepared to draft more sanctions against Iran. China,
too, is prepared to prevent Iran
from developing nuclear weapons. This came in a statement by the British
Foreign Secretary David Miliband following his telephone conversation with his
Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi. Iran's decision to further enrich
uranium runs counter to the provisions of relevant UN Security Council
resolutions. The Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev
has said that the world community's doubts about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear
research seem to be well-founded. According to him, Moscow
continues to favour a political and diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear problem, but
anyone's patience may wear thin in the long run.
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