Mohammad ElBaradei Visits One of Iran's Nuclear Facilities - 2003-02-21

Mohammad ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations nuclear inspections, visited one of Iran's nuclear facilities today, which the U.S. suspects could be part of a program for producing prohibited weapons by the Islamic Republic. According to Radio Iran, Mr. ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), visited the Natanz facility in central Iran with two experts. No report has yet been released regarding the results of this inspection. During his two-day visit to Iran, Mr. ElBaradei is also expected to visit another workshop that U.S. officials believe is apparently for enriching uranium and other operations related to the construction of nuclear weapons. Iran has denied that it is implementing a program to produce nuclear weapons and has requested the IAEA to inspect its facilities. The Iranian government claims that these facilities are exclusively for peaceful purposes and are intended to meet Iran's rapidly increasing electricity needs. Yesterday, a spokesman for one of the opposition groups to the Islamic Republic regime told reporters in Washington that the Iranian government had preemptively moved suspicious equipment from the nuclear facilities in Natanz to another location to hide it before the UN inspectors' visit. The National Council of Resistance of Iran claims to have obtained information from sources inside Iran that the Iranian government will prevent UN inspectors from entering one of the five buildings located at the Natanz facility. This dissenting group states that the Iranian government's centrifuge device, which is used for enriching uranium for the production of nuclear weapons, is located in that building. The centrifuge is a special device for separating very fine particles suspended in uranium, and it does this by rapidly rotating around an axis inside a special container that creates a centrifugal force. Iran has signed the international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which is overseen by the United Nations, and is not allowed to acquire or manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran insists it has no nuclear weapons program and has invited the UN to inspect the relevant facilities in Iran. Earlier this month, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami announced that Iran is extracting uranium from a newly discovered mine and that two nuclear power stations are being constructed. Richard Boucher, the spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, stated that this acknowledgment from Iran raises serious questions about whether Iran's nuclear program is peaceful or not.