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Fox News Live

Monday, June 14, 2004

United Nations calling on Iran to be more transparent

John Scott: The chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency is calling on Iran to be more transparent and proactive. But Iran says it won’t make any more concessions to prove its nuclear programs are peaceful. Can the country be forced to cooperate? Let’s ask Fox foreign affairs analyst, Alireza Jafarzadeh. Thanks very much for being with us.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Thank you very much, John.

John Scott: What do you think? is Iran working on a nuclear bomb?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: John, definitely. Iran has been working on a nuclear bomb for the past 20 years. They conceded last year in October that they were lying for 18 years and they promised to come clean and provide a comprehensive report. But ever since, there have been many lies that have been found by the IAEA. There were highly enriched uranium traces that were found in a number of sites in Iran. The enrichment level is about 36% which is much higher than enrichment for peaceful purposes, which is about 3-3.5%. They have not been able to explain what the scope of their advanced P-2 centrifuge machine is. And they are just basically playing games.

John Scott: What does a country that has so much oil need with nuclear power, a peaceful program?

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Well, you nailed it. I think Iran clearly doesn’t need that kind of a program. But they need it as a shield, as using it to hide their actual nuclear weapons program. I revealed last month that Iran actually has two parallel programs. One a benign-looking, supposedly for peaceful purposes, the nuclear reactor in Bushehr and other places, and also they have a parallel program which is a nuclear weapons program that is run by the military. And a lot of the research and things that are done supposedly on the peaceful side are actually used for the military purpose.

John Scott: But Mohamed ElBaradei, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, has not been able to come up with any proof. They are saying that there is no indication that Iran is breaking proscriptions against nuclear weapons development.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Well, the same report and the same Mr. ElBaradei announced today that Iran has not been cooperative, that they have not come up with answers to very serious unanswered questions, both related to the origin of the highly enriched uranium that was found there and their P-2 machines. So, I think the reason that they are running into problems is because Iran is dragging its feet. And they are causing all kinds of problems, and the international community is not coming up with decisive measures against Tehran.

John Scott: One of the potential problems for the administration is if they point to what has happened in Iraq, the administration was pretty certain there was a nuclear weapons development program underway in Iraq, hasn’t been able to find evidence right now, up to this point. Could the same thing happen in Iran, could there be this sort of crying wolf problem.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Absolutely not, John. This is a totally different situation. You can’t apply what happened in a country into another country. By same extension, you can not apply plain vanilla generic strategy in dealing with that problem. In the case of Iran it is not assumptions. There are specific locations in Iran; these are nuclear sites that were not revealed by Iran. In fact I appeared on Fox in August of 2002 and revealed the sites in Natanz and Arak. Inspectors have visited those sites; they have found centrifuge machines there. They have found highly enriched uranium traces in Iran, P-2 machines are being developed in Iran, parts have been manufactured …

John Scott: So, we are looking at one of the world’s terrorist sponsor potentially getting the bomb in the next year or two.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Definitely, Their plan is to get the bomb by the end of 2005. And I think it is very important that the IAEA in their upcoming meetings in the next couple of days, come up with a serious, strong resolution that would refer the case of Iran to the UN Security Council.

John Scott: Alireza Jafarzadeh, thank you.

Alireza Jafarzadeh: Thank you, John.

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