Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his most brazen rejection yet of international efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear aspirations, publicly opened a nuclear production facility Saturday.
Ahmadinejad appeared at the opening of a nuclear facility in the city of Arak, south of Tehran, which will produce the plutonium needed to build nuclear warheads. The complex was surrounded by anti-aircraft batteries during Ahmadinejad’s press conference, and journalists were barred from photographing certain areas.
“There are no talks of nuclear weapons in Iran,” President Ahmadinejad said with a smile as he inaugurated the plant. “And we are not a threat for any country, even the Zionist regime - the enemy of the countries in the region.”
Ahmadinejad followed up his conciliatory words with a threat to “use force” against any country that tries to stop Iran’s nuclear bid. “We tell Western countries not to cause trouble for themselves, because the Iranian people are determined to take big steps,” he said.
Iran still officially claims the nuclear plants are for the sake of producing nuclear power. The Islamic Republic, though, is the world’s fourth-largest oil producing country and is in no need of alternative energy sources.
In response to UN demands that it stop enriching uranium, Ahmadinejad demanded last week that the world bow to Iran. "If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender."
Iranian Deputy Parliament Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar threatened that too much pressure on Iran would lead to calls from Iranian citizens themselves for the government to embark on a nuclear weapons program. “Our country is confronted with illogical countries that have nuclear weapons,” he told an Iranian paper. “If they put too much pressure, our people might ask the government to produce nuclear weapons as a deterrent.”
Nuclear weapons can be produced either using plutonium or enriched uranium as the explosive core. A reactor using enriched uranium uses regular water in the energy-producing process. A heavy-water reactor like the one just inaugurated is able to run on natural uranium, which can be mined in Iran and bypass the enrichment process currently the focus of UN Security Council ire. Plutonium can be extracted from the spent fuel of the heavy-water reactor and used in a bomb.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh says the heavy-water facility is to be used to treat AIDS and cancer, as well as for other medical and agricultural uses.
Iranian expatriate commentator Amir Taheri wrote a biting response to Iranian claims that it is pursuing nuclear capabilities for purposes other than nuclear weapons, in Saturday’s Arabic Al-Shark Al-Awsat:
“Iran does not have any working nuclear power plant and thus has no immediate need of enriched uranium even as fuel. The only Iranian nuclear power plant under construction in Hellieh on the Bushehr Peninsula is not scheduled to come on stream before next spring. And when it does, it will have enough fuel for the first 10 years of its operation. Russia, which is building the station, has offered to provide all the needed fuel for its entire lifespan of 37 years...
"Iran does not need any enriched uranium at least until next March. After next March, it would still need not produce any enriched uranium until the year 2017. Even after 2017, Iran would still have no need of domestic uranium enrichment for the Hellieh plant until 2044...
“It is hard to argue a case in favor of nuclear power plants in Iran. Iran has the world's second or third largest oil reserves and the second largest reserves of natural gas. Even if Iranian domestic consumption of energy were to reach average Western levels in the next decade or so, Iran would still have enough domestic energy resources to last it more than 400 years. As several studies by Iranian academics have shown, nuclear power would be at least 27 per cent more costly to produce and distribute than electricity generated by oil, gas or hydroelectric power plants.
“There is yet another argument against nuclear power plants in Iran. The whole country is located on one of the most active earthquake zones in the world. Hellieh, the place where the first nuclear power plant is being built, has been destroyed by earthquakes on at least three occasions in the past century or so...
“The obvious answer is that the Islamic Republic wants to put itself in a position to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons.”