Iran Nuclear Revelations Expose Continued Iranian Lies

COMMENTARY Global Politics

Iran Nuclear Revelations Expose Continued Iranian Lies

Sep 25, 2009 1 min read
COMMENTARY BY

Former Visiting Fellow, Allison Center

James Phillips was a Visiting Fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

The Obama Administration made a bombshell revelation on the eve of the G-20 summit about Iran’s continued lying about its nuclear program. Anonymous “American officials” disclosed to the New York Times that U.S. intelligence agencies had uncovered another secret Iranian nuclear facility that Iran had failed to divulge to the International Atomic Energy Agency as required under its nuclear safeguard commitments. The secret facility reportedly is a uranium enrichment plant capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges that is built inside a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran near the city of Qum.

The American officials noted that they had been tracking the construction of the facility for years but decided to reveal it only after the Iranian government had discovered that its secret had been compromised. Tehran tried to cover its tracks by notifying the IAEA of the existence of the facility in a cursory letter on Monday, but it was required to do so before construction began.

President Obama publicly announced the revelations this morning ahead of the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh, saying: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow — endangering the global non-proliferation regime, denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve, and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world.” The President called on Tehran to take meaningful steps at the upcoming talks between Iran and five members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany on October 1:

At that meeting, Iran must be prepared to cooperate fully and comprehensively with the IAEA to take concrete steps to create confidence and transparency in its nuclear program and to demonstrate that it is committed to establishing its peaceful intentions through meaningful dialogue and concrete actions.

But there is little reason to expect Iran’s radical regime to suddenly come clean about its nuclear weapons program after more than two decades of lying about it. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration remains committed to “engaging” with the Iranian regime despite its continued duplicity, repression of its own people, and systematic support for terrorism.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal