Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Iran

U.S., EU Renew Calls For Iran To Suspend Enrichment

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack (file photo) (official website)

April 10, 2007 -- The United States and European Union have renewed their calls for Iran to suspend uranium-enrichment activities.

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April 10, 2007

The statements came after President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on April 9 announced that Iran is now capable of producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale through enrichment.

MORE: World reacts to Iranian announcement.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McComack said Iran's decision not to halt enrichment-related activities would have increasing "costs for the Iranian people," such as lost business deals due to international sanctions.

"They have decided not to, at this point, stop their enrichment-related activities, and that comes along with costs for the Iranian people and that's rather unfortunate, because it doesn't have to be that way," McCormack said. "There are opportunity costs for now -- business deals that don't get done, for trade that doesn't happen, for investment that doesn't happen."

Spokespeople for the European Union urged Iran to halt enrichment, and said the bloc remained committed to the two sets of United Nations sanctions that have been imposed on Iran over its refusal to halt such work.

(AP, BBC)

Talking Technical

A control panel at the Bushehr nuclear power plant (Fars)

CASCADES AND CENTRIFUGES: Experts and pundits alike continue to debate the goals and status of Iran's nuclear program. It remains unclear whether the program is, as Tehran insists, a purely peaceful enegy project or, as the United States claims, part of an effort to acquire nuclear weapons.
On June 7, 2006, RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel spoke with nuclear expert Shannon Kile of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden to help sort through some of the technical issues involved. "[Natanz] will be quite a large plant," Kile said. "There will be about 50,000 centrifuges and how much enriched uranium that can produce [is] hard to say because the efficiency of the centrifuges is not really known yet. But it would clearly be enough to be able to produce enough [highly-enriched uranium] for a nuclear weapon in fairly short order, if that's the route that they chose to go...." (more)

Tehran Says It Is Working On Advanced Nuclear Fusion

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Satellite Images Raise Questions About Iran's Nuclear Program

Centrifuges And Political Spin?

How Close Is Iran To Getting Nuclear Bomb?

Iran: The Worst-Case Scenarios

THE COMPLETE STORY: RFE/RL's complete coverage of controversy surrounding Iran's nuclear program.

CHRONOLOGY

An annotated timeline of Iran's nuclear program.

India -- Investigators work at the site where a vehicle exploded near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, 13Feb2012

Alleged Attacks Tehran's Way Of Lashing Out?

(INTRO) Israel has blamed Iran for two bombings targeting its diplomats in India and Georgia this week, as well as for a botched bombing in Bangkok that Thai intelligence officials said were aimed at top Israeli diplomats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran's "terrorist activities" have been exposed, but Iran has denied any involvement. RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari spoke to Juan Zarate, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism about the attacks and Iran's alleged role. More

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad (center) looks on as scientists unveil a fuel rod at the Tehran Research Reactor.

Iranian Nuke Still One-To-Three Years Away, Says Expert

Iran on announced on February 15 that it has installed its first domestically produced nuclear fuel rods in a reactor in Tehran. Tehran also announced that it activated a new generation of centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear facility. RFE/RL spoke with nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby about what the advances reveal regarding Iran's uranium enrichment abilities, which Western countries allege are aimed at secretly building a nuclear weapon. More

Iran has stepped up its pressure on activists using the Internet

Iranian Activists, Journalists Receive Threatening E-mails

A number of Iranian activists and journalists based inside and outside the country have told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda they have been threatened in anonymous e-mails. More