AFP/Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Bombshell claims about Iran’s secret uranium plant reveal a tale of years of clandestine espionage by Western spies peering into the hidden heart of Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Senior officials from the US, France and Britain offered a tantalising glimpse yesterday into a joint intelligence operation tracking what the West says is Iran’s drive to build a nuclear bomb.
But their sparing briefings on the discovery of a hidden Iranian uranium enrichment plant burrowed into a mountain near the holy city of Qom—which Iran now denies was ever secret—provoked a list of unanswered questions:
What happened to blow the cover of the operation, prompting Iran to reveal the facility this week to the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why did the allies wait to brief other key world powers on the programme until the middle of a frenetic week of crucial international summits at the UN and the G20?
Are there more secret, underground nuclear sites hidden inside Iran?
Months of daring intelligence gathering lay behind dramatic revelations by US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G20 summit yesterday.
Officials from all sides said they had been watching the Qom site for years.
Spy chiefs reasoned that since Iran’s other known uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was revealed in 2002, Tehran would develop an alternative site.
“Our intelligence services working in very close co-operation with our allies for the past several years have been looking for such a facility,” said one US official. “And not surprisingly we found one.”
A French official said that construction at Qom started four years ago—before fiery Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected Iranian president.
Another source said the work on the secret plant started in earnest in 2006.
So why would the Western powers wait so long to reveal it?
One US official said it would have been a “terrible” mistake to go public before intelligence agencies had time to build an “undeniable” case.
Recently - officials declined to reveal the precise timing - Iran learned that the US, France and Britain knew about the facility. It then disclosed its existence in a letter to the IAEA.
Officials refused to say exactly how Iran was tipped off that the programme was compromised, or to reveal intelligence methods.
But they signalled, clearly with the disastrous intelligence failures over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programme in mind, that they had taken months to build an unchallengeable case against Iran.
Yesterday’s revelations also hinted at high stakes decisions behind closed doors in Washington, Paris and London, as the allies worked out how best to use their explosive information.
Obama, who vowed to engage Iran as a candidate, was first informed of the Qom programme in classified intelligence briefings he received as president-elect, following his election win in November.
The allies were mute on the plant right up until this week at the UN General Assembly in New York, raising questions about whether their hand was forced by Iran in just the last few days.
On Wednesday, Obama raised the subject with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in talks in New York.
That detail, revealed by a senior US official, may explain Medvedev’s sudden new openness to the idea of backing sanctions against Iran.
But Obama apparently did not disclose the intelligence to China’s President Hu Jintao on Tuesday.
China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which will play a key role in any new sanctions on Iran, was informed in the last 24 to 48 hours, officials said.
That timeline adds credence to the idea that actions by Iran in the last few days may have altered how the allies planned to play their trump card.
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