CIA moles sabotaged Iran, Libya nuke programs - report
Washington, 25 August (IranVNC)—The Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] recruited a family of Swiss engineers to deliver top secret information that helped end Libya’s nuclear bomb program, shed light on Iran’s nuclear progress, and undo the nuclear black market of Pakistan’s Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a report in the New York Times said today.
By: IranVNC
Published: Monday, August 25, 2008
11:00GMT—7:00AM/EST
IRAN – NUCLEAR PROGRAM – CIA
Washington, 25 August (IranVNC)—The Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] recruited a family of Swiss engineers to deliver top secret information that helped end Libya’s nuclear bomb program, shed light on Iran’s nuclear progress, and undo the nuclear black market of Pakistan’s Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a report in the New York Times said today.
According to the report, the engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, not only provided insider information to the CIA, but also assisted the U.S.’s top intelligence agency in sabotaging atomic gear bound for Iran and Libya. In return, the Tinners were paid as much as ten million dollars.
“That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began.
Diplomats first became suspicious of the sabotage when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] found during their inspections in Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged but made to look perfectly fine.
In a later incident, a sabotaged power supply shipped to Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Natanz from Turkey in early 2006 failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode. According to the report, this was “a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran’s efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel.”
Last year, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization [IAEO], Gholam-reza Aqazadeh, told a reporter that Iranian investigators discovered that the power supply had been manipulated. Following the discovery, he said Iran “checked all the imported instruments”, the report says.
Western powers suspect Iran is using its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons.
IAEA Deputy Director Ollie Heinonen visited Tehran twice this month for talks with senior Iranian atomic officials to clarify outstanding questions the agency had regarding the alleged weaponization studies Iran had conducted.
But Iran insists its program is purely peaceful and that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon. Such comments were echoed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday, in an interview with American reporter Charlie Rose conducted in Tehran.
“We consider possession of nuclear weapons to be against humanity,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by the Iran Economist website as saying, adding: “Nuclear weapons no longer have a use and do not grant a political advantage to those countries that have them.”
He added: “Even if we do have conventional weapons, it is for our own defense.”
Ahmadinejad said that although Iran “has no problem” with the IAEA, the agency “is under the pressure of powers that have nuclear weapons.”
Meanwhile, Hassan Qashqavi, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters yesterday that Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA is “routine” and that talks between the two sides have been “constructive”.
Iran has been hit with three rounds of United Nations sanctions for refusing to halt its sensitive uranium enrichment work. The U.S. and UK said earlier this month that they would consider another round of sanctions after Iran failed to respond favorably to demands that it freeze its enrichment work in exchange for an incentives offer.
Iranian officials have stated that the enrichment of uranium is their “right” under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT].
“The nuclear policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran are clear and the peaceful activities of Iran are transparent, and there is never any room for certain political deals and games,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said yesterday, reports the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Sources: New York Times, Iran Economist website, ISNA in Persian
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