Notes from underground: more evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons development

Con Coughlin of The Telegraph reports that additional evidence that Iran does, indeed, have a nuclear weapons development program has emerged:

Fresh evidence has emerged that Iran is working on a secret military project to develop nuclear weapons that has not been declared to United Nations inspectors responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme.

Nuclear experts working for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna are pressing the Iranians to make a full disclosure about a network of research laboratories at a secret military base outside the capital Teheran.

The project is codenamed Zirzamin 27, and its purpose is to enable the Iranians to undertake uranium enrichment to military standard. Zirzamin means “basement” in Farsi, which suggests the laboratories are underground and 27 refers to the 27-year-old Iranian revolution.

Concerns over activity at Zirzamin 27 will be raised at this week’s meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors in Vienna, which starts today.

Suspicions have been growing that Iran has a secret military nuclear research programme since UN inspectors discovered particles of enriched uranium at a research complex at Lavizan, a military base on the outskirts of Teheran, in 2003.

At this point, at least in my view, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Iran has a nuclear weapons development program. We don’t know how far along this program is but, considering the additional enrichment capacity that seems to be revealed, we should be starting to think in terms of months, a year, or a couple of years rather than the 8 to 10 years that some were suggesting as recently as early this year. Although I continue to be hopeful that some measures short of actual war will allow this situation to be resolved. Make no mistake: the notion that we can eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons development program by bombing alone is highly unlikely and possibly extremely dangerous to our own interests in the region, the environment, and the Iranian people.

But tempus is fugiting and in all likelihood very soon we will be left with the alternatives of coming to some kind of modus vivendi with a nuclear-armed mullahocracy in Iran which President Bush has repeatedly said is unacceptable and an invasion of Iran which I think nearly everyone can agree is also unacceptable.

Tigerhawk has an excellent post on dealing with Iran this morning.

UPDATE: Bloomberg is reporting that the traces of highly-enriched uranium found and reported by the IAEA a month ago aren’t evidence of domestic production:

June 11 (Bloomberg) — Iran said traces of highly enriched uranium found by United Nations inspectors in Tehran, which have increased speculation Iran is trying to build an atomic bomb, came from abroad and aren’t evidence of domestic production.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency found the traces at a university in January. The nuclear watchdog’s board meets tomorrow in Vienna and will release a report saying “no further progress” was made in uncovering the origin of the traces, according to a copy seen by Bloomberg News.

“This is not a very important thing,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran today, in a press conference carried live on state television. “It has been clarified once and for all that the source of contamination was not domestic but came from abroad.”

Iran is continuing with its nuclear program, which it says is aimed at electricity production, in defiance of international pressure and a non-binding UN resolution. The nation has yet to react to European Union proposals, delivered June 6 and backed by the U.S., which seek to end the standoff.

The uranium found in Tehran wasn’t enriched to weapons grade, a senior UN official with knowledge of the IAEA’s Iran investigation said June 8. The official requested anonymity because the UN report hadn’t been formally presented to the IAEA board. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will present the report to the board tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this may not be particularly good news. There are a number of distinct concerns: Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons on the one hand and its ability to produce them on an ongoing basis on the other. Concerns about their domestic enrichment process focus on the latter. However, the revelation that Iran has received enriched uranium from abroad would seem to make it increasingly likely that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in the nearer term or, as some have suggested, may already have a small number in its possession.