Pacific News Service > News > Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis (Part 1)

Pacific News Service > News > Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis (Part 1): "Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis (Part 1)
News Analysis, William O. Beeman and Thomas Stauffer,
Pacific News Service, Jun 26, 2003
Editor's Note: The Bush administration is turning up the heat on Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, but the authors say the evidence just isn't there. Part 1 of a two-part series.

President Bush declared on June 25 that 'we will not tolerate' a nuclear armed Iran. His words are empty. The physical evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran simply does not exist.

Iran is building a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr with Russian help. The existence of the site is common knowledge. It has been under construction for more than three decades, since before the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Two other nuclear research facilities, now under development, have come to light: a uranium enrichment plant in the city of Natanz and a deuterium ('heavy water') facility in the city of Arak. Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not.

The Bushehr plant is only part of the argument that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program, but it is the part that can readily be analyzed. State Department accusations of dangerous Iranian intentions for the Natanz and Arak facilities are based on a patchwork of untestable, murky assertions from dubious sources, including the People's Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen-e Khalq, MEK or MKO), which the United States identifies as a terrorist organization. These sources assert that there are centrifuges for enriching uranium (a"

Pacific News Service > News > Is Iran Building Nukes? An Economic Analysis (Part 2)

Pacific News Service > News > Is Iran Building Nukes? An Economic Analysis (Part 2): "Printable Version Return to Normal Version | Send Page to Friend
Is Iran Building Nukes? An Economic Analysis (Part 2)
News Analysis, William O. Beeman and Thomas Stauffer,
Pacific News Service, Jun 27, 2003
The Bush administration argues that nuclear power generation makes no sense for an oil-rich country like Iran, implying that the country's power plants are for arms manufacture. The authors examine the facts. Part 2 of a two- part series.

The furor in Washington over possible nuclear weapons development in Iran is fueled in part because Bush administration officials claim that Iran doesn't need to generate nuclear power. They assert that Iran's nuclear energy program is unnecessary given its oil reserves. Therefore, officials say, its nuclear plants must exist for weapons production.

In fact, for Iran, generating nuclear power makes sense. Moreover, the plans to do this were started decades ago, and with American approval.

Ex-CIA director James Woolsey, in an interview on the PBS program Frontline on Feb. 23, claimed 'there is no underlying (reason) for one of the greatest oil producers in the world to need to get into the nuclear (energy) business.'

At first glance, such logic seems sound. Countries with vast oil reserves also have large reserves of natural gas sitting on top of those reserves. Some years ago, the natural gas was regularly burned off to get at the oil beneath. However, technological advances today make it feasible to use this gas for power generation.

Even so, nuclear power still makes sense in a country with vast amounts of natural gas, particularly given the unusual circumstances in the Iranian hydrocarbons in"