U.N. Inspectors To Inspect Iran's Nuclear Plant
A delegation from the U.N.'s nuclear agency is due to inspect a uranium-enrichment plant in Iran Sunday. The inspection comes amid continued diplomatic maneuverings over efforts to reign in the country's nuclear program. Host Liane Hansen speaks to NPR's Mike Shuster about the news from Iran.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have for the first time visited a heretofore secret uranium enrichment facility in Iran. The facility has been under construction for more than three years, but its existence was only disclosed in September. The Iranians say they intended to make its existence public all along, but the U.S. government believes it may be part of a wider, clandestine, nuclear weapons program in Iran.
NPR's Mike Shuster joins us now. And Mike, first of all, what are the IAEA inspectors hoping to achieve?
MIKE SHUSTER: Well, they've already sent a small group of inspectors to the facility, which is south of Tehran about 20 miles north of the city of Qom. It's not that far from Tehran. And what they want to do is now get down on paper, establish a public record about what this facility is all about.
Until today, no inspectors and no outside eyes have actually seen this facility, it's been under construction for several years, and we didn't really know about it publicly until September.
The Iranians say that this is a uranium-enrichment facility for about 3,000 gas centrifuges. That's a relatively small-scale centrifuge facility, especially when compared to the one that's known about, the one that IAEA inspectors regularly visit and make reports about. There are 8,000 gas centrifuges there, and the Iranians want to build a much larger, industrial-scale facility there.
So, the inspectors will see how far along this construction is, what special equipment may have been put in it, what is the nature of the centrifuges that are being used? They could be more advanced than the Natanz facility is.
There's a great deal of information to be learned, and the inspectors will be there, will make more than one visit. They are going to stay in Iran, apparently, for several days and make more than one visit to the facility.
HANSEN: The facility, as you said, under construction on a military base near the city of Qom in a mountain tunnel. Now, why all of the secrecy?
SHUSTER: Well, the Iranians have hinted that their building it in secret that they'd intended to disclose its existence all along, but they were building it in secret as a backup because there's been a lot of talk about attacking Iran's nuclear facilities over the last few years, and some people think that they were building it as a backup so that if there were an attack, they'd have a second facility.
There are others who believe that this is part of a wider and deeper, clandestine program to enrich uranium and ultimately to build a nuclear weapon, and that could be the case, as well, but there's no certainty about that.
HANSEN: A little context. This inspection follows talks with Iran this past week on a deal to ship out much of its uranium stockpile to Russia and France. Tell us a little more about that because Iran was supposed to make a final decision on this on Friday, but it didn't happen.
SHUSTER: No, Iran was supposed to sign off on this deal. The details of the deal, there were two-and-a-half days of talks in Vienna at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency to try to nail this down, and on Friday, Iran balked. It didn't nail it down.
Iranian officials said they need more time and that they would perhaps finally sign off on this in the coming week. But this is an interesting scheme whereby Iran's - most of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, we're talking about more than a ton of low-enriched uranium, would be shipped to Russia and then to France for processing and then shipped back to Iran to be used at a research reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes that the Iranians say are running out of fuel.
This was a good plan for everybody. This is something that the White House proposed, and it looked like Iran was going to go for the deal. Now there's not a great deal of certainty about it, and we have to wait this week for a few days to see what's going to happen.
HANSEN: NPR's Mike Shuster. Thanks, Mike.
SHUSTER: You're welcome, Liane.
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