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by Sam Roe
By Sam Roe
Tribune staff reporter
August 23, 2006, 9:56 PM EDT
In the heart of Tehran sits one of
Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where
scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country
build atomic bombs. It was provided to the Iranians by the United
States.
The Tehran Research Reactor
represents a little-known aspect of the international uproar over the
country's alleged weapons program. Not only did the U.S. provide the
reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War strategy, America also
supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facility—fuel
that remains in Iran and could be used to help make nuclear arms.
As the U.S. and other countries
wrestle with Iran's refusal this week to curb its nuclear capabilities,
an examination of the Tehran facility sheds light on the degree to which
the United States has been complicit in Iran developing those
capabilities.
Though the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, has found no proof
Iran is building a bomb, the agency says the country has repeatedly
concealed its nuclear activities from inspectors. And some of these
activities have taken place in the U.S.-supplied reactor, IAEA records
show, including experiments with uranium, a key material in the
production of nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials point to these
activities as evidence Iran is trying to construct nuclear arms, but
they do not publicly mention that the work has taken place in a
U.S.-supplied facility.
The U.S. provided the reactor when
America was eager to prop up the shah, who also was aligned against the
Soviet Union at the time. After the Islamic revolution toppled the shah
in 1979, the reactor became a reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally
can become tomorrow's threat.
Also missing from the current debate
over Iran's nuclear intentions is emerging evidence that its research
program may be more troubled than previously known.
The Bush administration has
portrayed the 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 Iranian scientist, Morteza
Gharib, told the Tribune that management of the facility had improved in
the past three years. When asked whether sloppiness at the reactor might
have contributed to some of Iran's troubles with the IAEA, Gharib wrote
in an email: "It is always possible, for any system, to commit
infractions inadvertently due to lack of proper bookkeeping."
Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control
expert at Harvard University, said bungling might be to blame for some
infractions, but the Iranians clearly concealed major nuclear
activities, such as building a facility to enrich uranium. "This was not
an oversight," he said.
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 bomb makers. 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 cannot 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.
In an interview, Linton Brooks, head
of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the U.S.
Energy Department, said the U.S. would like to retrieve the
U.S.-supplied fuel, but the top priority has been to get Iran to suspend
its enrichment efforts.
Under the international Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for
peaceful purposes. But the UN Security Council, saying Iran has failed
to prove it is not building weapons, has demanded Iran stop enrichment
by Aug. 31 or face economic sanctions. This week, Iran offered "serious
talks" on its nuclear activities but did not promise to stop enriching
uranium.
While Brooks downplayed the
proliferation risk of the Tehran Research Reactor, some experts believe
the facility is so important to Iran's nuclear program that it would be
targeted in a U.S. military strike on Iran.
"Its purpose is mainly advanced
training and producing a cadre of nuclear engineers," said Paul Rogers,
an arms control expert at the University of Bradford in England. "So
it's one of the facilities that is really quite significant."
Exactly how significant is unclear.
The Tehran reactor provided the foundation for Iran's nuclear program,
but that program now consists of numerous other facilities as well. And
over the years, Iran has obtained nuclear aid from various sources,
including Russia and the black market network of Pakistani scientist A.Q.
Khan. China also has supplied research reactors.
Most of the world's nuclear research
reactors, which train students or produce radioisotopes for medicine,
fall under IAEA restrictions. Agency inspectors have visited the Tehran
facility several times in recent years. Iran says its nuclear program,
including the U.S.-supplied reactor, is solely for peaceful purposes.
When arguing for tough penalties on
Iran, U.S. officials have pointed to activities in the U.S.-supplied
reactor.
In 2004, John Bolton, the State
Department's senior arms control official at the time, told a
congressional panel that Iran's covert nuclear weapons program was
marked by a "two-decades-long record of obfuscation and deceit." He
cited experiments in the reactor as part of the evidence.
Several months later, Bolton told
another congressional panel that Iran had received technological
assistance from companies in Russia, China and North Korea in an attempt
to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Countries that provide Iran such
weapons-of-mass-destruction technology "ought to know better," said
Bolton, now the American ambassador to the United Nations. If foreign
companies aid Iran, the U.S. "will impose economic burdens and brand
them as proliferators."
What Bolton didn't note:
America's role in Iran's nuclear program.
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.
Those who defend the U.S. say it
should not be faulted for aiding Iran in the past. "It's not the
international community's fault for helping Iran exercise its rights in
the past" to develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses, said Lewis, the
Harvard expert. "It's Iran's fault for not living up to its safeguards
obligation."
Iran's nuclear program can be traced
to the Cold War era, when the U.S. provided nuclear technology to its
allies, including Iran. In 1953, the CIA secretly helped overthrow
Iran's democratically elected prime minister and restore the shah of
Iran to power.
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.
In 1979, when the shah was
overthrown and U.S. hostages taken, America and Iran became enemies;
Iran's nuclear power program stalled.
The U.S. refused to give Iran any
more highly enriched uranium for its reactor, and Iran eventually
obtained new fuel from Argentina. This fuel is too low in enrichment to
be used in weapons but powerful enough to run the facility. To this day,
the reactor runs on this kind of fuel from Argentina.
In papers filed with the IAEA,
Iran states that before the 1979 revolution it gave the U.S. $2 million
for additional highly enriched uranium fuel for its American-supplied
reactor but the U.S. neither provided the fuel nor returned the $2
million.
In 2003, shortly after IAEA
officials inspected the U.S.-supplied reactor, Iran acknowledged it had
conducted experiments on uranium in the reactor between 1988 and
1992—activities that had not been previously reported to the agency.
The IAEA rebuked Iran for failing to
report these experiments and expressed concern about other activities in
the reactor. These included tests involving the production of
polonium-210, a radioisotope useful in nuclear batteries but also in
nuclear weapons.
Inspectors also were curious why
some uranium was missing from two small cylinders. Iran said the uranium
probably leaked when the cylinders were stored under the roof of the
research reactor, where heat in the summer reached 131 degrees
Fahrenheit.
When inspectors took samples from
under the roof, they indeed found uranium particles. But inspectors did
not think Iran's explanation about leaking cylinders was plausible.
Eventually, Iran acknowledged the
missing uranium had been used in key enrichment tests in another
facility.
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