Experts Weigh in on Obama’s Explanation of Iran’s Nuclear Facility

Washington Independent by Spencer Ackerman | Sep. 28, 2009 (News Report)

Flanked by the French president and the British premier, President Obama on Friday dramatically stated that the “size and configuration” of a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the clerical city of Qom make it “inconsistent with a peaceful program.” Several independent experts believe the facility is most likely being constructed to support a nuclear weapons program, especially as Iran’s concealment of it comes after years of ... Full Story »

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 by Derek Hawkins - Sep. 28, 2009

“If you have 50,000 [-centrifuge] facility, you don’t go to all the expense build a new facility to increase capacity by 6 percent,” said James Acton, a nuclear researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “None of this makes sense for an economic standpoint. What it does make sense for is a weapons standpoint.” Yet that reasoning is inferential, not explicitly concluded from the “size and configuration” of the Qom facility. “It’s kind of hard to draw clear red lines about [centrifuge] numbers,” Acton cautioned. “Any facility is capable of producing any amount of uranium of any enrichment if it has time to do so.”

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