| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iranian nuclear chief hints Tehran's atomic programme WAS geared towards building a nuclear bomb |
| 2021-11-30 |
 [Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News]
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| Iran Has 18,000 Uranium Centrifuges, Says Outgoing Nuclear Chief |
| 2013-08-18 |
 [Jpost] Salehi: Ahmadinejad "personally responsible for nuclear issue."Iran has installed 18,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges, the country's outgoing nuclear chief was quoted as saying by Iranian media on Saturday. The US and its Western allies are pressing Iran to curb its uranium enrichment program, which they suspect is aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability, but Iran refuses and insists its nuclear activity is for purely peaceful purposes. New Iran's diminutive President Hassan Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator who oversaw a previous deal to suspend Iran's uranium enrichment, has welcomed new talks with world powers over the program but has insisted on Iran's right to enrich uranium. Iran has 17,000 older "first-generation" IR-1 centrifuges, of which 10,000 are operating and 7,000 are ready to start operations, the ISNA news agency quoted Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, outgoing head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), as saying. A May report from the UN nuclear watchdog indicated that Iran had by then installed roughly 16,600 IR-1 machines in two separate facilities. Abbasi-Davani also said there were 1,000 new, more advanced centrifuges ready to start operations, in a reference to IR-2m centrifuges, which once operational would allow Iran to enrich uranium several times faster than the IR-1 machine. The IAEA in its last report in May said Iran had installed a total of 689 such centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings. Rouhani on Friday appointed Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's previous foreign minister, to take over the AEOI. Salehi, who once headed the agency, is seen as a pragmatist, as opposed to the more hardline Abbasi-Davani. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran presidential hopefuls remain united on N-issue |
| 2013-06-03 |
 TEHRAN The eight candidates standing for president this month may differ on several issues, but when it comes to Irans nuclear drive they are united in pursuing what they see as its peaceful atomic ambitions.Whoever is elected president on June 14 to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic republic is unlikely to alter the course of its controversial programme of uranium enrichment. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei takes Definitely the result of the presidential election will not have any influence on the nuclear issue, the countrys atomic chief Fereydoun Abbasi Davani has said. The presidential hopefuls including the frontrunner, Irans nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili have all insisted that the nuclear project will proceed. Regardless of who is elected president in June, uranium enrichment activities will be pursued without fear against the enemy, Jalili said. The president must demonstrate this in a practical manner to the supreme leader, Jalili, who has been negotiating with world powers on the issue since October 2007, said on his campaign website. |
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| Bushehr plant needs 2-3 years to become fully operational | |||
| 2013-01-10 | |||
Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi Davani said today that country's nuclear power plant Bushehr would need 2-3 years to become fully operational, Fars reported.
He added that Bushehr can work on its nominal capacity, however for the full implementation of the project, more time is needed, namely 2-3 years. Abbasi noted that after all the security measures are taken, the Iranian specialists can take the control of Bushehr from the Russian experts. "The necessary security tests need to be undertaken, to ensure everything is right, security wise," Abbasi said. "This is vital for us to be sure that the plant works safely."
In September 2011, the Bushehr nuclear power plant officially began its operations, generating electricity at 40 percent of its capacity. The 1000-megawatt plant, which is operating under the full supervision of the IAEA, reached its maximum power generation capacity for the first time on August 30, 2012.
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| U.S. imposes sanctions on Iran's nuclear energy chief |
| 2012-12-13 |
| The United States stepped up pressure on Iran on Thursday over its nuclear program, imposing sanctions on seven companies and five individuals, including Iran's atomic energy chief. The U.S. Treasury Department said the action would bar those companies and individuals from doing business with U.S. firms or citizens, and freeze any assets they have in the United States. Among those sanctioned is Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and a survivor of an assassination attempt that Iranian officials have blamed on Israel. At least four scientists associated with Iran's nuclear program have been killed since 2010; Abbasi-Davani was wounded. Iran has accused Israel and the United States of plotting the killings to set back its nuclear program. Washington has denied any U.S. role and Israel has declined to comment. Foreign banks that handle transactions for the companies and individuals listed by the Treasury could also lose their access to the U.S. banking system under the U.S. sanctions regime. |
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| Iran accuses Siemens of sabotaging nuclear program | |
| 2012-09-23 | |
 Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi on Saturday accused German company Siemens of sabotaging its nuclear program, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) reported.According to the news agency, citing Boroujerdi, Iranian security experts discovered small explosives embedded in equipment Tehran bought from Siemens for its nuclear program. DPA quoted Borojerdi as claiming, "the equipment was supposed to blow up after installation in order to destroy our [nuclear] systems." Siemens immediately dismissed the allegations, with DPA quoting company spokesman Alexander Machowetz as saying, "we have no business dealings related to the Iranian nuclear program." The United Nations has banned the sale of nuclear-related equipment to Iran.
Abbasi-Davani also told the annual member state gathering of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that "the same act" had been carried out on power lines to Iran's main uranium enrichment plant near the central town of Natanz, without giving a date. He concluded by accusing the IAEA of a cynical approach and mismanagement and suggested that "terrorists and saboteurs" might have infiltrated it. Iran has previously accused Israel and the West of being behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and of trying to damage its nuclear program in other ways, such as cyber attacks. | |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran Unplugged: Preview of Coming Attractions? |
| 2012-09-18 |
| Irans nuclear-energy chief said Monday that his nations most heavily defended nuclear-enrichment plant had been unplugged with extreme prejudice last month. Actually, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani said the electrical lines powering the buried plant at Fordow from the nearby city of Qom had been blown up by unknown saboteurs. The same thing happened at Irans Natanz plant at an unspecified earlier date, he told the annual member-state session of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The world fears Tehran which says it wants to develop nuclear power solely for peaceful purposes is seeking nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that Iran was six to seven months away from being able to build an atomic bomb. It should be recalled, Abbasi-Davani told the IAEA, that power cut-off is one of the ways to break down centrifuge machines. No kidding. For years, U.S. war planners looking for ways to attack such sites have focused on their so-called umbilicals the power, air and water links that any major industrial facility requires to operate. With those destroyed, any industrial site becomes very expensive pile of scrap. Hardening such systems against such ancillary attacks could prove daunting. A functional defeat may be achieved by various means: closing ingress/egress portals, destroying umbilicals such as electrical power lines, phone line and radio antennas, or by denying life-support systems relating to air and water supplies, a 2004 Air Force study noted. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran arrests 3 Fordo sabotage suspects who entered from Azerbaijan |
| 2012-09-19 |
 Iran is holding three suspects who entered the country from Azerbaijan under intense grilling to discover their role in the mid-August explosion of the power lines to the underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, DEBKAfile's exclusive Iranian sources reveal. Tehran is also questioning the engineers, planners and company heads who built the facility to find out why it was not provided with an independent power generator.Fordo was forced to be idle for several days until the Revolutionary Guards were able to set up an alternative electrical network at top speed. Iranian investigators suspect that local builders of Fordo may have been bribed by Israeli and American agents to omit this back-up system and so leave the enrichment plant vulnerable to external attack that would interrupt its continuous operation. Their inquiries have even reached the Atomic Energy Commission inspectors who supervised construction, some of them very close to the commission's chairman Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, and demanded explanations for letting the omission stand. The act of sabotage showed Iran how simple it would for aggressors to bring the Fordo plant to a total standstill simply by cutting its 40- kilometer power link to the Qom power station. An electricity cut would additionally disarm the facility's security system, including the radar and air defense batteries guarding it. According to DEBKAfile's sources, the Iranians have kept the three arrests under tight blackout in the hope of rounding up the rest of the team suspected of responsibility for the explosion and, above all, identifying the hand behind it. Their main suspect is Israel. Our Iranian sources have discovered that the three detainees hail from Tehran, Tabriz in the north and Zahedan in the southeast. They are all in their twenties. According to our intelligence sources, the Iranian inquiry so far points to their having trained at a secret military base in Azerbaijan 25 kilometers south of Baku and infiltrated Iran shortly before the operation. It was to this attack Abbasi referred Monday, Sept. 17, when he stood up at the nuclear watchdog's annual meeting in Vienna and flatly accused the IAEA of being infiltrated by "terrorists and saboteurs" and of foreknowledge of the explosion. Already, Iranian officials have turned the incident into a propaganda tool. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi used his first ever Egyptian television interview Tuesday, Sept. 18 to comment: "Israel can't carry out an attack against such a big country [like Iran], and it knows that." He called Israeli warnings about a possible strike "empty." Salehi also said (apropos of nothing) that his "country's neighbor, Azerbaijan, would not assist Israel in carrying out any attack on Iran." DEBKAfile: The Iranian foreign minister's show of contempt for Israel was meant to dull the huge impact the explosion at the Fordo plant has had inside Iran and across the Arab world, whereas his remark on Azerbaijan was a signal to Baku that it is under heavy Iranian suspicion of complicity in the blowing up of the power line. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran: Saboteurs cut power lines to underground nuclear site |
| 2012-09-17 |
| Explosives were used to cut power lines from city of Qom to Fordow underground uranium enrichment plant last month, Iranian nuclear chief claims; says "terrorists, saboteurs" have infiltrated UN nuclear watchdog. Explosives were used to cut the electricity power lines to Iran's Fordow underground enrichment plant last month in an apparent attempt to sabotage Tehran's atomic advances, its nuclear energy chief said on Monday. It was believed to be the first time Iran has mentioned the incident, which Iranian atomic energy organization chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani said took place on Aug. 17. He also told the annual member state gathering of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that "the same act" had been carried out on power lines to Iran's main enrichment plant near the central town of Natanz, without giving a date. Abbasi-Davani made clear his view that sabotage would not be successful in slowing Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at developing an atomic bomb capability but which Tehran says is purely peaceful. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran underground uranium site operational soon: official |
| 2012-01-09 |
| [Dawn] Iran's underground uranium enrichment facility will go on stream soon, a bigwig was quoted by Iranian media on Sunday as saying, a move likely to increase tension between the Islamic state and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. "The Fordow nuclear enrichment plant will be operational in the near future ... 20 per cent, 3.5 per cent and four per cent enriched uranium can be produced at this site," said the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, the Kayhan daily reported. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran to Give IAEA 'Full Supervision' if Sanctions Lifted |
| 2011-09-06 |
| [An Nahar] Iran is ready to give the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency "full supervision" of its nuclear program for five years if U.N. sanctions are lifted, its nuclear chief said in remarks published Monday. "We have proposed that the agency keep Iran's activities and nuclear program under full supervision for five years, providing the sanctions are lifted," the nuclear chief, Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, told ISNA news agency. Iran is targeted by four sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment amid fears in the West that it seeks to build a nuclear bomb -- a charge it vehemently denies. Abbasi Davani neither said when the offer was made to the IAEA, nor what he meant by "full supervision." Much of Iran's nuclear activities are already under the control of the IAEA, including uranium enrichment -- a process which can both produce the fuel for a nuclear reactor and the fissile material for an atomic warhead. The IAEA said in a confidential report, a copy of which was obtained by Agence La Belle France Presse on Friday, that it is "increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations." These included "activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile", according to the report, which is due to be discussed by the IAEA's 35-member board of governors at a September 12-16 meeting. But Abbasi Davani said such allegations are "baseless and fabricated" Tut tut! Made up out of whole cloth, I assure you, including the pictures! The agency has for years criticized Tehran for refusing to answer a number of questions about its nuclear program, and for denying access to certain sites, including the heavy water reactor Iran is building in the central city of Arak. |
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| Iranian gets death sentence for scientist's murder | ||||
| 2011-08-29 | ||||
| TEHRAN: An Iranian accused of assassinating a scientist on behalf of Israel has been sentenced to death, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported on Sunday. Majid Jamali-Fashi had pleaded guilty to murdering Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2010, the first of several attacks on scientists which Iran said were the work of enemies that wished to stop it developing nuclear technology.
Although IRNA described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist, a spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said in the days after his death that he had not played a role in the activities of the organization.
Eleven months after the bomb attack that killed Ali-Mohammadi as he set off to work, two other scientists were targeted. Majid Shahriyari, who authorities said had a role in one of Iran's biggest nuclear projects, was killed but Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani survived and has since been appointed head of the Iranian nuclear organization.
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