Los Angeles Times
February 3, 2007
ESFAHAN, Iran —
The squat, tan buildings with barred windows can
be reached only by driving well outside the city to a flat stretch of
desert on the edge of the hills. The site is surrounded by an array of
anti-aircraft artillery emplacements, each with one or two soldiers at
the ready, and a large metal fence topped with barbed wire.
Once inside the reception hall, visitors are greeted by a huge
poster that says: "Nuclear Energy Is Our Obvious Right."
Here, in a city considered the heart of its nuclear development
program, is where Iran has been taking the initial technological steps
to turn ordinary uranium into the makings of nuclear fuel.
In a rare invitation to foreign visitors Saturday, Iranian
officials opened the doors of the normally closed facility. The
officials reported that the fledgling conversion program, which was in
its infancy only three years ago, has manufactured 250 tons of uranium
hexafluoride gas, the feedstock for Iran's controversial uranium
enrichment program.
The group included visitors from all over the world, said Ali
Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy
Agency. "We have decided they would come here to have the opportunity
to see themselves what is going on," he said as they walked through
the large rooms of tanks, feeder lines, pressure gauges and control
panels.
The official delegation of seven included representatives of the
Non-Aligned Movement, the G-77 group of developing nations and the
Arab League, all accredited to the IAEA in Vienna, Austria. Iranian
officials allowed a group of journalists to cover the visit.
"We want to remove these ambiguities and questions from our Arab
brothers and sisters in the region. They have to know that everything
is transparent and it is for peaceful purposes, and there is no
concern as far as safety is concerned," Soltanieh said. "You will
notice these facilities are of the highest standard, and a lot of
investment has been made in order to prevent any environmental
impact."
The uranium conversion facility at Esfahan is only a piece of
Iran's nuclear program, which the Islamic republic says it is pursuing
in order to develop new sources of electrical power and maintain the
nation's high level of oil exports.
The next and most controversial step is conducted at an even more
secret plant at Natanz to the north, where the feedstock material
produced at Esfahan is processed through a series of centrifuges to
enrich the uranium for use as fuel for nuclear reactors. Enriching it
far more than that, a level beyond Iran's present capability, most
experts believe, would be sufficient for use in a nuclear weapon.
The U.S. and some other countries believe that might be the
ultimate target of Iran's power program, but Iran insists it is
opposed to nuclear weapons and simply would withdraw from the
Nonproliferation Treaty if it wanted to build one.
The U.N. Security Council has adopted a first tier of sanctions
against Iran, which freezes some assets and bars companies from
selling materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear
program. The U.S. has warned it will seek to toughen the sanctions
soon if Iran does not halt enrichment activities, and there are
growing fears in Iran that the U.S. or Israel could launch military
strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.
The Arab League's representative to the IAEA, Mikhail Wehbe of
Syria, warned that military action against Iran's nuclear program
would be a mistake.
"These issues should be dealt with with the utmost standard of
diplomacy. Not with a threat. Because any threat to a nuclear
facility, it could be catastrophic," he said.
Saturday's tour was mainly a publicity exercise; the delegates
admitted they understood little of what they were seeing. But it was
clearly part of a strong effort on Iran's part to demonstrate its
willingness to open up its nuclear program to inspection.
Soltanieh said Iran is proceeding with its previously announced
schedule to install 3,000 new centrifuges at Natanz, part of an
industrial-size enrichment operation whose debut Iranian officials are
expected to announce soon, perhaps as early as the Feb. 11 anniversary
of the 1979 Islamic revolution.