Word: natanz
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...broader approach. While declaring its refusal even to discuss the Qom plant at Geneva, Tehran has indicated that it will open the site to IAEA inspectors "in the near future." The Iranians are probably hoping for a repeat of the experience of its main enrichment facility at Natanz - which was also constructed in secret but then subjected to an ongoing IAEA inspection regimen. The result is that Natanz, which gives Iran the capacity to produce fissile material, has become an increasingly intractable fact on the ground, although IAEA oversight prevents such material from being diverted for covert weapons work...
...Western officials say the site is less extensive than the main enrichment plant at Natanz, containing only 3,000 centrifuges. (Natanz has 8,308 installed.) And it is still under construction and not yet producing enriched uranium, the officials say. At a news conference later in the day, Ahmadinejad confirmed that the site won't be operational for 18 months and said Iran's work on the facility was not a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But as in the case of Natanz, the second plant's existence was initially kept secret and only acknowledged when Iran...
...particularly uranium enrichment - puts a nuclear weapon within short-term reach should Iran decide to assemble one. (Israel and U.S. believe that Iran has not yet taken such a decision, and to do so it would have to expel the international inspectors that currently monitor its enrichment facility at Natanz. That's because the uranium already enriched there would have to be reprocessed to a far higher degree of enrichment to create bomb matériel.) The position adopted until now by the U.S. and its European allies and Israel is that Iran should not be permitted to develop even...
...presented by Solana's team two weeks ago, would begin with the "freeze for freeze" proposal - a six-week period during which the international community would refrain from imposing new sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran agreeing to stop adding new uranium-enriching centrifuges at its facility in Natanz. Unlike in previous proposals that failed to break the deadlock, Iran would not be required, at least during the preliminary talks, to halt enrichment altogether, as the Bush Administration has demanded...
...Nevertheless, that same day, more than 6,000 miles away, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seemed to ignore any such olive branches. He declared that his country now has 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at Natanz churning out highly enriched uranium that he says will be used to generate electrical power. But Washington and its allies fear that Iran's enrichment capability will be used to create fissile material for nuclear bombs. So, the U.S. continues to hedge its bets. After all, while it released two of the five Iranians captured in Irbil...