Ahmeanie and co.: 3,000 centrifuges have been installed at Natanz nuclear facility
MSNBC is reporting that Ahmeanie is declaring that Iran can make nuclear fuel “on an industrial scale”:
WASHINGTON – Iran’s latest statements on its nuclear program were “another signal” that Tehran was defying the international community’s call to give up uranium enrichment activities, the United States said Monday.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said when asked about Iran’s announcement that it had begun industrial scale nuclear fuel production. “This is another signal that Iran is defying the international community.”
McCormack’s statement was a reaction to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement Monday that Iran was now capable of producing nuclear fuel on an “industrial scale” in an expansion of the uranium enrichment program that the United Nations has demanded it halt.
The announcement suggests Iran has succeeded in operating a larger number of centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.
Asked if Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani replied, “Yes.” He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months of saying it intends to do so. Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating.
“With great honor, I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale,” Ahmadinejad said.
Earlier on Monday, Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh also announced the start of “industrial scale” enrichment of uranium, calling it “another step toward the flourishing of Islamic Iran” Aghazadeh said at Natanz.
Aghazadeh heads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
Bryan at Hot Air writes:
All of this would seem to add a bit of urgency to the international community’s drive to stop Iran from getting nukes. Well, if the Chinese and the Russians weren’t also part of that international community and using their positions on the UNSC to block meaningful sanctions on Iran, anyway. Perhaps the installation of 3,000 centrifuges will earn Mahmoud a letter telling him that the international community is “really, really mad” at him and is considering issuing both a vicious rant and an important action alert against him. The very fear of such a thing might well strike him dead on the spot.
Sorry to sound so flip about all this. It’s gallows humor, trust me. Basically, the vaunted international community is letting one of the most pernicious regimes on the face of the earth obtain nuclear weapons. Everyone knows what’s going on. No one is willing to do much about it. We stand villified for stopping Saddam Hussein, and would be villified all the more if we act any time soon to stop Mahmoud. When he gets the nuke and blows up a city somewhere, we’ll be villified for not stopping him. That’s how the international community works.
Indeed – but I should add that the ‘international community’ would be interested right away if it was Israel ratcheting up their rhetoric against Iran and bragging about their nuke capabilities.
Charles Krauthammer said it best about the international community in response to their non-reaction to the hostage crisis between Britain and Iran:
The capture and release of the British hostages illustrate once again the fatuousness of the “international community” and its great institutions. You want your people back? Go to the European Union and get stiffed. Go to the Security Council and get a statement that refuses even to “deplore” this act of piracy. (You settle for a humiliating expression of “grave concern.”) Then turn to the despised Americans. They’ll deal some cards and bail you out.
And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the left (and the mediots), who have already accused the President of deliberately overstating the case against Iran “just like he did Iraq”, would prefer the UN ‘handle’ foreign policy matters of grave concern to the US: because, like the UN, the left would rather just look like sound tough than actually be tough. In response to the hostage situation in Iran, I think we all know there’s no way that a Democratic president would have stepped up like the admnistration did in behind the scenes talks with their equivalents in the UK:
The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.
In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.
The international community will continue to sleep on this one, the left will remain cautiously silent hoping the problem will just ‘go away’, and the administration will continue to explore options as to what to do about the growing threat from Iran. But if action is deemed necessary sometime in the near future, the US may not be the ones who act first.