Issue 10, Spring 2012 "On August 14, it will be 10 years to the day that the slippery opposition group the People's Mujahedin of Iran publicly revealed full details about an unfinished uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and an unfinished heavy water reactor at Arak, thus beginning the Iranian nuclear crisis.
"Despite endless international calls to halt uranium enrichment, Iran has spent the past decade pressing on. In 2002 Iran could not enrich uranium. It can now do so to a level of at least 20 percent, which involves most of the energy required to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels - 80 percent or above (weapons manufacturers consider 93 percent ideal ). The hard work has been done. As a senior Iranian diplomat told me in Vienna a while back: "Iran is now the master of enrichment, the West will just have to accept it."
"Iran's conservatives argue that the West was in terminal decline and incapable of imposing its will on their country.
"With a round of talks in Baghdad scheduled for June 2012, an opportunity has arisen once again and it must be grasped - from both sides. We cannot wait another 10 years for the next one."
Source: Patrikarakos, David (May 4, 2012). They're scared in Tehran. Haaretz English Edition. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/why-this-round-of-iran-nuclear-talks-is-different-1.428167?localLinksEnabled=false
David Patrikarakos is a journalist, and author of "Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State," due to be published this August by I.B. Tauris.
|