Iran closer to the bomb that previously thought

Adnkronos International:

Iran may be much closer than previously thought to possessing significant quantitites of enriched uranium, according to revelations to Adnkronos International by a source who has had direct access to the research laboratories of A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s bomb and now in disgrace for selling nuclear secrets to states with nulcear ambitions. READ MORE

To date, the only means to establish whether Tehran already possessed enriched uranium to make atomic bombs, have been intelligence reports, suppositions and denunciations by Iranian dissident groups, keen to curry favour with the West.

It was the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the People's Mujahdeen, that in 2002 gave a decisive contribution to revealing the existence of the secret plant at Natanz, used by the Iranians to enrich uranium, though some of their subsequent claims have been proven incorrect.

In Vienna, in November 2004, Farid Soleimani, the Council leader, alleged that in 2001 Khan had handed over to Iran a significant quantity of enriched uranium. The government of Islamabad swiftly issued a denial. However, a high-level source, who asked to remain anonymous, says that the allegation was founded and that the transferral of enriched uranium (as well as components for building centrifuges for enrichment and of designs for building missile heads able to transport the bomb) dated back much earlier.

Our source recounts an anecdote of which he was a direct witness. The location is Islamabad, the date 11 February 1999, the 20th anniversary of the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomenini in Iran. Pervez Musharraf, head of the armed forces but not yet president [the coup which toppled the government of Nawaz Sharif was still six months away] pays a visit to the Iranian embassy.

The international community is watching Pakistan with concern and consternation. The previous year it had carried out its first nuclear tests in the remote areas of Baluchistan, the nuclear trafficking activities of Dr A.Q. Khan were already known in part to the US intelligence establishment and suspicion was mounting that Pakistan may have lent a hand to other countries in the race for nuclear weapons.

The attitude of the Islamabad government at the time was dismissive, reflecting ithe words of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s president from 1971 to 1973, when Pakistan’s nuclear programme was just getting off the ground. “There is a Christian Bomb, a Jewish Bomb and a Hindu Bomb. There must be an Islamic Bomb!"

On his way out from meeting the Iranian ambassador, Musharraf is greeted by a small group of Pakistani journalists. One of them asks whether it is true that Pakistan is helping Tehran in building a nuclear weapon. With a knowing wink at the ambassador Musharraf smiles. “It's natural that friends help one another” he says.

That episode was never reported in the media because agents of the powerful ISI intelligence apparatus approached the journalists and “asked” them not to write even a line on what they had heard.

”I am recounting this episode to illustrate what everyone knows and no-one in Pakistan will ever admit officially, that is, Khan was a scape goat, he was sacrificed to pay for everyone because his network was under the control of the government and the military” our source explained.

In those years, he continued, the network had a vast reach and two specific aims: to fund and develop Pakistan’s nuclear programme and to line the pockets of the intelligence and military hierarchy which should have controlled it.

"Saudi Arabia provided money. North Korea, with China’s blessing, gave us missile technology in exchange for our information on centrifuges. Libya gave us more money in return for designs of the bomb and the centrifuges for uranium enrichment, and even Iran, in return for cash, received its fair share of technology and material."

”On various occasions, Tehran received plans and component for the centrifuges, uranium and even some enriched uranium. Technology and materials were often moved across the border with Baluchistan, or through Afghanistan, all areas where the controls of ‘enemy’ intelligence services were almost impossible" he added.

“When Musharraf made that comment at the Iranian embassy, it was not just a quip, it was a picture of what was going on in those years” he said.

Several months after those never–reported comments, on 12 October 1999, Musharraf overthrew prime minister Nawaz Sharif and became Pakistan’s new strong man.

Two years on, to be precise 12 September 2001, the general-and-president who had been treated as a pariah by the international community for his explicit support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, made an abrupt about-face becoming a key ally of the West in George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

After the Khan network’s trafficking became public at the start of 2004, Musharraf received various high level and far from cordial visit from the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, and agreed to collaborate with Washington.

Gradually it emerged that the terminals of Khan’s network involved: Libya, Iran, North Mkorea, but also Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

A glance at a list of countries visited by Khan in the last years of activity includes Kazakstan, Ivory Coast, Mali, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocc, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, UAE and Tunisia - Islamic countries and uranium producing countries.

For two years Khan has been under house arrest in his home in Rawalpindi and to date Islamabad has allowed neither the Americans not the inspectors of the UN's atomic watchdog the IAEA, to interrogate Khan.

Certain journalistic reconstructions of events, inspired by Khan’s friend and biographer, Zahir Malik, describe a man who is hurt, depressed and unable to understand how he, who claims always to have acted ‘in good faith’, has been downgraded from national hero to outlaw.

But the network he put in place has not been dismantled because of his arrest. “The thing goes on even if very discreetly because controls are tighter, the CIA could have infiltrated the laboratories, but the network is so vast that no-one can stop it, not even Musharraf” the source said..

”There are parts of the intelligence services and military over which he has no control and despite the efforts of the CIA and the Pakistani government to stop the smuggling, they (intelligence and military chiefs) are not prepared to give up on the money.

What has moved puppets and puppetmasters in a high stakes game has not been the suggestion of creating a pan-Islamic bomb but the much more mundane question of cash. “It was simply a question of money” he concluded.