[NYTr] Bush Says He Approves of Russian Fuel to Iran; Also Says NIE Supports Him on Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Although the Times's Cooper says it's a blow to the US that Russia has
given nuclear fuel to Iran, other coverage says it's fine with Bush --
one even claims Russia asked the US first and Bush gave the go-ahead.
But then he's also now claiming that the NIE on Iran  -- that report he
first denied he'd, then denied he saw until the day before it was made
public, then admitted he'd known of for months -- well, now he's saying
it supports his warnings of how dangerous Iran is.  All the more
reason to slap more sanctions on Iran, or go to war. This guy is too
foggy to be a psychopath. He's just a dumb drunk or he's smoking crack. 

Meanwhile, as Putin ignores Bush, Iran's Ahmadinejad sallies forth to
make the Hajj at the invitation of the Saudi King, and Iran has
announced it's building a new reactor. -NY Transfer]



The New York Times - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/world/middleeast/18diplo.html

Iran Receives Nuclear Fuel in Blow to U.S.

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — The United States lost a years-long battle when Russia
delivered nuclear fuel on Monday for an Iranian power plant that is at
the center of an international dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran, for its part, rejected the idea that the delivery might mean it
no longer needed to do its own uranium enrichment to make fuel, citing
work on a second power plant.

In announcing that it has delivered the first fuel shipment to the
power plant at Bushehr in southern Iran, Russian officials said that
the fuel would be under the control of the International Atomic Energy
Agency while it is in Iran, and that the Iranian government had given
guarantees that the fuel would be only be used for the power plant.

The Bush administration, for its part, took pains not to publicly
criticize the Russian move, and said that the fuel delivery means Iran
should suspend its nuclear enrichment program. “If the Iranians accept
that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there’s no need
for them to learn how to enrich,” President Bush told reporters on
Monday.

“There is no doubt that Russia and the rest of the world want to keep
Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” a White House spokesman, Gordon
Johndroe, said. “And today’s announcement provides one more avenue for
the Iranians to make a strategic choice to suspend enrichment.”

But Iran said that it needed to enrich uranium for another new nuclear
power plant in the south of the country. That announcement came through
the Fars news service.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Organization, said that
Iran needs to produce fuel for a second plant under construction. “We
are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovin,” Mr.
Aghazadeh said.

“The fuel for this plant needs to be produced by Natanz enrichment
plant,” he added, according to the news agency.

Darkhovin is a city in the southern province of Khusestan, north of
Bushehr, which is better known for its oil fields.

Bushehr and Darkhovin were both projects planned before the 1979
revolution, and abandoned later. It was not clear how much construction
had been made at Darkhovin.

Privately, administration officials said that they had been hoping,
with dwindling confidence, that Russia would continue to stall on
delivering the fuel, in part to send a message to Iran that the United
States and its European, Chinese and Russian allies were hanging tough
in their attempts to punish Iran for refusing to suspend enrichment.
“We for many years tried to stop it, and for the last year we’ve known
there was no way to stop it, and that it was coming, and we held our
breath on the timing,” a senior administration official said.

>From the American standpoint, the timing of the Russian fuel’s delivery
couldn’t have been worse, coming just two weeks after the release of a
United States intelligence estimate that concluded that Iran stopped
its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The National Intelligence Estimate
also concluded that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons
program as of mid-2007, undercutting a central tenet of the Bush
administration’s basis for maintaining international pressure against
Iran.

While administration officials maintain that the intelligence estimate
does not mean that the United States and its allies should ease up the
pressure against Iran, the practical consequence of the report has been
to embolden Iran that China and Russia, two of the countries with
perhaps the smallest appetite for tough sanctions, will not agree to a
new round of tough sanctions at the United Nations. Russia’s decision
to deliver fuel to Bushehr further emboldens Iran, several
administration officials and European diplomats said privately.

[Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran and Michael Schwirtz
from Moscow.]

                               ***

Reuters - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17412367.htm

Bush supports Russia sending enriched uranium to Iran

FREDERICKSBURG, Va., Dec 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush
said on Monday he supports Russia sending enriched uranium to Iran for
civilian power use because it meant that Tehran did not need to pursue
their own enrichment capabilities.

"If the Russians are willing to do that, which I support, then the
Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich," Bush said. "If the
Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then
there's no need for them to learn how to enrich."

Russia has delivered the first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran's
Bushehr atomic power station, which Moscow and Washington say should
convince Tehran to shut down its disputed uranium enrichment program.

Bush said Iran was a danger so long as it pursued a nuclear program
that could lead to the development of weapons. Tehran insists its
program is for peaceful energy purposes only.

Despite a U.S. intelligence assessment that Tehran had halted its
nuclear weapons program in late 2003, Bush said: "I think Iran's a
danger to peace. My attitude hasn't changed toward Iran. If somebody
had a weapons program what's to say they couldn't start it up tomorrow?"

The United States is seeking another round of U.N. sanctions against
Iran. "They owe an explanation to the world," Bush said.

"That (intelligence) report says to me, when you read it carefully,
Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat to peace, and Iran will be a threat
to peace if we don't stop their enrichment facilities," Bush said.

(Writing by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Patricia Wilson) 

                              ***

RINF.com - Dec 17, 2007
http://rinf.com/alt-news/politics/bush-twisting-nie-to-support-iran-war/2039/

Bush ‘twisting NIE to support Iran war’

US intelligence agencies would not have published the NIE with ‘high
confidence’ unless they were quite sure, a US analyst has said.

Bush is now trying his best to twist and warp the published report so
that it complements rather than contradicts his dire warnings about
Iran, Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University,
says.

“Still, even by historical standards, President Bush has been unusually
averse to admitting error. But Bush’s reaction to the considered view
of his own intelligence agencies sets a new standard. He and his aides
quite obviously wish the intelligence community had kept its views to
itself,” he added in an article published by the San Francisco
Chronicle.

“By some accounts, the administration was building a case to attack
Iran. At the very least, it was trying to convince China and Russia to
accept a more stringent United Nations Security Council resolution.
Now, of course, the odds of passing that resolution are slim,” Brinkley
said.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in his speech, with obvious
displeasure, that the intelligence agencies decide on their own what to
report and when to make it public, he added.

“That wasn’t always so. During the buildup to the Iraq invasion, the
White House pressured the agencies to produce ‘intelligence’ to support
his case for war. The agencies complied. Quite obviously Bush and his
aides remain wistful for those days,” the article concluded.

BGA/RE

                             ***

Intl Herald Tribune - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/africa/17iran.5.php

Iran indicates it is building another nuclear plant

By Nazila Fathi

TEHRAN: Iran confirmed on Monday that it had received the first fuel
shipment for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr, but also indicated for
the first time that it was building a second nuclear power plant.

The revelation came in comments by Iran's Atomic Organization,
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, made to state-run television and reported by the
semi-official Fars news agency. He was dismissing speculation that the
arrival of the fuel would allow Iran to halt its uranium enrichment
program, in Natanz.

"We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovein,"
he said, referring to a southern city north of Bushehr.

"The fuel for this plant needs to be produced by Natanz enrichment
plant," he added, Fars said.

Bushehr and Darkhovein were both projects planned before the 1979
Revolution. It was not clear how much construction had been done at
Darkhovein. The location is also sometimes spelled Darkhovin, or
referred to by other nearby place names, including Ahvaz, Esteghlal and
Karun.

Aghazadeh said Monday that Iran needed to increase the centrifuges at
the Natanz enrichment plant from 3,000 to 50,000, saying that with the
current 3,000, it could only produce fuel for a 100-megawatt plant.

The White House had signaled on Monday that the arrival of the fuel
could help convince Iran to curb its enrichment program. President
George W. Bush that If Iran accepted the uranium for a civilian power
plant, "there was no need for them to learn how to enrich," Reuters
reported.

Aghazadeh said the shipment was made after an agreement was made
between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian President Vladimir
Putin during his visit in October to Tehran.

Construction of Bushehr has been hindered by repeated delays. Earlier
this year Russia delayed a fuel shipment expected in March, accusing
Iran of tardiness in making its monthly payments of $25 million.
However, Western officials said that Russia made the decision in part
to help the West to pressure Iran into more openness on its nuclear
program.

Last week, Sergei Shmatko, the director of Atomstroyexport, announced
that Russia and Iran had ended their financial disputes over the
project, though he failed to indicate a date for when the long-awaited
opening would occur.

Esipova said the plant will be technically ready to operate no sooner
than six months after all the uranium fuel rods needed to power the
station are delivered.

Aghazadeh said Monday that almost 95 percent of the work at Bushehr was
finished and it could produce power as early as the next Iranian year,
which begins on March 21.

"The first phase of delivery has been completed," said Irina Esipova, a
spokeswoman for Atomstroyexport, the Russian contractor on the project.
"A small amount of fuel is already on the premises of the Bushehr
station in a special storage facility." The company plans to deliver
about 80 tons of nuclear fuel to Iran over the next two months, she
said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the fuel would be
under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency and that
Iran had given written guarantees that the fuel would only be used for
the nuclear power plant.

"All fuel that will be delivered will be under the control and
guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the whole time
it stays on Iranian territory," the Foreign Ministry said in a
statement. "Moreover, the Iranian side gave additional written
guarantees that the fuel will be used only for the Bushehr nuclear
power plant."

The statement added: "After the Russian fuel is processed at the
Bushehr nuclear power plant, it will be returned to Russia for further
processing and storage."

The power station is at the heart of an international dispute over
Iran's nuclear program. Iran insists that Bushehr is part of a civilian
nuclear program. However, critics, particularly in the United States
and Western Europe, have accused Tehran of secretly developing or
planning to develop a nuclear bomb.

The United States released a National Intelligence Estimate two weeks
ago concluding that Tehran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003,
undermining earlier claims by the Bush administration that Iran was
actively developing a nuclear weapon.

Officials in Washington have nevertheless continued to insist that Iran
remains a threat, sentiments which have been echoed by some European
leaders. Iran considers itself to have been vindicated by the
intelligence report. On Sunday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the
nuclear issue his "toughest battle and challenge" in recent years, but
said the intelligence report had boosted Iran's international status, a
statement on the website of Iran's Foreign Ministry said.