Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...smoking gun - it hasn't even been loaded yet - but it is a covert operation of some sort, perhaps a bomb-making facility, perhaps a research-and-development shop. It is the latest evidence in Iran's history of attempting to hoodwink the rest of the world about its nuclear program. A similar game was played with the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, which was exposed...
...those of us who sat with Ahmadinejad, the real headline was his apparent cluelessness. It was almost as if Obama's announcement had taken him by surprise. It is well known that Ahmadinejad doesn't have operational control over the nuclear program or Iranian foreign policy - that resides with Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei - but the exact extent of his powers, beyond management of the domestic economy, remains a mystery. He did not seem very powerful to us. His answers to our questions were sometimes opaque, often blatantly false, though not confrontational. Almost every question brought forth a flurry...
...done during the national trauma of the Iran-Iraq war, whether he had seen combat or lost friends. When I asked his opinion of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's famous 2001 Quds Day speech, in which he called for an "Islamic bomb" to counter Israel's nuclear arsenal, Ahmadinejad denied that Rafsanjani had ever made such a speech. I said that I'd been there, using an official Iranian translator, and that the speech had made headlines worldwide. "None of the Iranians here around the table recall such a statement," he said - and the assembled Marx brothers turned...
...believe him? Nope, me neither - but I am also not convinced that Iran intends to build a nuclear weapon. "I think they're hedging," says Jim Walsh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a nonproliferation expert who speaks frequently with the Iranians. "I don't think they've made a weapon decision, but I do think they want breakout capability" - the ability, similar to Japan's, to quickly assemble a bomb if necessary. "If you actually build a bomb, you start incurring real international costs, as the North Koreans have," added Walsh, referring to the fact that the Russians...
President Barack Obama's strategy of engaging Iran finally got under way in earnest on Thursday with a positive response from Tehran to at least some of the concerns about its nuclear program. At a meeting in Geneva with officials from Western powers, Russia and China, Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect a hitherto secret uranium-enrichment facility under construction near Qum. President Obama and his allies expressed grave concern last week about the site after revelations of its existence, and they made the demand for its inspection...