Iran Still Wants Nuclear Weapons

Evidence emerging of Rouhani’s radicalism, once approved of hiding Iran nuclear work.

Joel Rosenberg

In Uncategorized on June 19, 2013 at 4:24 pm

Hassan Rouhani’s radicalism is coming to light.

Despite the widespread enthusiasm in world capitals and the media that there is new hope in Iran because a “reformer” has been “elected,” evidence is continuing to emerge that Hassan Rouhani is exactly what I have portrayed him: a dangerous Radical Shia Muslim who is deeply committed to the Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iran’s nuclear program, and to building atomic bombs in secret.

Consider the latest reporting:

•   Hassan Rouhani was endorsed by the only Iranian leader ever to publicly call for Israel to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.

•   Iran’s Hassan Rowhani rules out halt to uranium enrichment programme (London Telegraph)

•   A “Pragmatic” Mullah? (Wall Street Journal) –”[Rouhani] chaired Iran’s National Security Council between 1989 and 2005, meaning he was at the top table when Iran masterminded the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people, and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. airmen. He would also have been intimately familiar with the secret construction of Iran’s illicit nuclear facilities in Arak, Natanz and Isfahan, which weren’t publicly exposed until 2002.” Rouhani also “called on the regime’s basij militia to suppress the student protests of July 1999 ‘mercilessly and monumentally.’ More than a dozen students were killed in those protests, more than 1,000 were arrested, hundreds were tortured, and 70 simply ‘disappeared.’”

•   Rohani once approved of hiding Iran atomic work (Reuters)

“Years before he became Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rohani spoke approvingly about concealing his nation’s nuclear program and said that when Pakistan got atomic bombs and Brazil began enriching uranium, ‘the world started to work with them,’” reports Reuters. “The comments offer an intriguing window into the past thinking of Rohani, widely seen as a moderate or pragmatic conservative, whose surprise victory in weekend elections to succeed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was perceived by the United States and other Western powers as positive — at least at first glance.”

“Rohani has said he intends to pursue constructive interaction with the world and ‘more active’ negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, after his predecessor’s belligerence was met with painful international sanctions and military threats from Israel and the United States,” notes Reuters. “Ultimate decisions on Iran’s nuclear program will remain in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Western diplomats familiar with Rohani’s work as chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005 told Reuters the 64-year-old cleric was no pushover and had always been firmly committed to Iran’s nuclear program. He was secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005. It was in the autumn of 2004 that Rohani gave a sweeping speech to Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council called ‘Beyond the Challenges Facing Iran and the IAEA Concerning the Nuclear Dossier.’ In that speech, that is available on the blog Armscontrolwonk.com, Rohani said Iran did not want nuclear weapons.”

“As for building the atomic bomb, we never wanted to move in that direction and we have not yet completely developed our fuel cycle capability,” wrote Rouhani. “This also happens to be our main problem.”

“But he argued in favor of a kind of nuclear fait accompli to force the West to accept Iran’s enrichment capabilities,” noted Reuters. “He also referred to Pakistan’s successful acquisition of nuclear weapons in a positive light.”

“If one day we are able to complete the (nuclear) fuel cycle and the world sees that it has no choice, that we do possess the technology, then the situation will be different,” Rouhani said.

“The world did not want Pakistan to have an atomic bomb or Brazil to have the fuel cycle,” he said. “But Pakistan built its bomb and Brazil has its fuel cycle, and the world started to work with them. Our problem is that we have not achieved either one, but we are standing at the threshold.”

“Rouhani also discussed the decision by Iran to conceal its nuclear activities in the late 1980s and 1990s, when it relied on an illicit nuclear procurement network connected to the father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, to purchase enrichment centrifuge technology. ‘This (concealment) was the intention,’ Rohani said. ‘This never was supposed to be in the open. But in any case, the spies exposed it. We did not want to declare all this.’”

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