It’s been made apply clear time and again and historically that any nation who has not joined the elite international nuclear club is vulnerable and cannot consider itself to be a truly sovereign nation.
To join that privileged club it’s sometimes necessary to bend or break some rules but like they say, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.”
With the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility, President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded Friday that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions "or be held accountable" to an impatient world community.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iran has until December to comply or face new sanctions. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused Iran of "serial deception."
Said Obama: "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow."
Their dramatic joint statement opened the G-20 economic summit. Obama urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the site.
Iran has kept the facility, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from weapons inspectors until a letter it sent to the IAEA on Monday, publicly disclosed for the first time Friday.
But the U.S. has known of the facility's existence "for several years," a senior White House official said. Obama decided to go public with the revelation after Iran learned that Western intelligence agencies were aware of the project, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to let the statements from Obama and the leaders remain the focus.
The plant would be about the right size to enrich enough uranium to produce one or two bombs a year, but inspectors must get inside to know what is actually going on, the official said.
Obama hopes the disclosure will increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program. Beyond sanctions, the leaders' options are limited and perilous; military action by the United States or an ally such as Israel could set off a dangerous chain of events in the Islamic world.
In addition, Iran's facilities are spread around the country and well hidden, making an effective military response difficult.
While the leaders did not mention military force, Sarkozy said, "Everything, everything must be put on the table now."
The disclosure comes on the heels of a U.N. General Assembly meeting at which Obama saw a glimmer of success in his push to rally the world against Iranian nuclear ambitions. And it comes days before Iran and six world powers are scheduled to discuss a range of issues including Tehran's nuclear program.
Germany is one of those six powers, and while German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also in Pittsburgh, she did not appear with Obama, Sarkozy and Brown. Speaking to the German press separately, she said her country views the revelation of the second nuclear site as "a grave development" and called on Iran to answer IAEA questions about it "as quickly as possible."
She said Germany, Great Britain, France and the United States had consulted on the issue and agreed to a joint response. She said "we will see" about the reactions of China and Russia, which also are part of the group of six but always more reluctant to take a firm line on Iran.
Merkel did not appear with Obama, Brown and Sarkozy because she had a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the same time.
Earlier this week, Medvedev opened the door to backing potential new sanctions against Iran as a reward to Obama's decision to scale back a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe. But it's unclear if that will translate into action.
The senior administration official said Obama told Medvedev about the facility during their meeting in New York earlier this week. The Chinese were informed about 48 hours ago and are "just absorbing these revelations," the official said.
The U.S. has long avoided direct talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.
"The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law," Obama said.
Sarkozy and Brown struck an even more defiant tone.
"The level of deception by the Iranian government ... will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve," Brown declared, adding that it's time "to draw a line in the sand."
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no mention of the facility this week while attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but said that his country had fully cooperated with international nuclear inspectors.
Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single publicly known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.
Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential, said that Iran's letter to the IAEA contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.
But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was about 100 miles southwest of Tehran and was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.
Iranian semiofficial new agency ISNA on Friday confirmed reports on the country's second enrichment plant.
Iranian officials had previously acknowledged having only the one plant, under IAEA monitoring, and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.
An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at that underground facility outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.
Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium for a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors. But because enrichment can also produce weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will make fissile material for nuclear warheads.
*All this international wrangling and politicizing is interesting indeed, but as an afterthought, I wonder if Saddam or even the Taliban’s Mullah Omar would have had nuclear weapons, if they would still be in power and alive today. I guess the same hold true for countless other overthrown regimes since WWII. But then, just a thought…
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