Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile
Document seen by Guardian details web of front companies and middlemen
Ian Cobain and Ian Traynor
Wednesday January 4, 2006
The Guardian
The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes.
Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the report seen by the Guardian concludes.
The warning came as Iran raised the stakes in its dispute with the United States and the European Union yesterday by notifying the International Atomic Energy Authority that it intended to resume nuclear fuel research next week. Tehran has refused to rule out a return to attempts at uranium enrichment, the key to the development of a nuclear weapon.
The 55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies, and has been used to brief European government ministers and to warn leading industrialists of the need for vigilance when exporting equipment or expertise to so-called rogue states.
It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programmes and to enrich uranium. It outlines the role played by Russia in the escalating Middle East arms build-up, and examines the part that dozens of Chinese front companies have played in North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
But it is the detailed assessment of Iran's nuclear purchasing programme that will most most alarm western leaders, who have long refused to believe Tehran's insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is trying only to develop nuclear power for electricity. Governments in the west and elsewhere have also been dismayed by recent pronouncements from the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said that Holocaust denial is a "scientific debate" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1677542,00.htmlOther similar stories at the Guardian site.
Obviously, citizens in the U.S. and W. Europe are being softened up for a strike on Iran. What I can't figure out is why the Guardian is printing it and why German, French and Belgian intelligence is involved. Haven't they learned that what comes out of U.S. intelligence these days is completely B.S.? I certainly hate to think that there is anything to this.
On the other hand, Russia is supporting Iran, even though Iran turned down a Russian offer to enrich uranium for Iran's power plants in Russia. Could this be a shot across the bow of Russia in response to the natural gas ploy. Putin was a bit heavy-handed there, and no one responds well to being pushed around.
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