ABSTRACT
The Iranian nuclear crisis has entered a period of renewed tension over recent months. A clandestine enrichment facility was exposed in September 2009, near the northern city of Qom.
Responding to international criticism of its secrecy in building the plant, Tehran in November 2009 defiantly announced its
intention to build a further ten enrichment plants. The crisis further deepened in January 2010, when Iran missed a 31
December 2009 deadline for accepting a deal, proposed through
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to send approximately three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium stockpile offshore to Russia for further enrichment for subsequent fabrication into fuel rods (for the Tehran research reactor) in France. In February 2010, the colourful and controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad subsequently declared Iran a ‘nuclear power’ and announced Tehran’s intention to raise the enrichment level of its uranium from a maximum of 3.5% to the
20% level needed for the research-reactor fuel, thus bringing it
a step closer to the estimated 90% mark required for a nuclear
weapon. Shortly after enrichment to the 20% level commenced,
the IAEA issued a report which, for the first time in this crisis,
expressed concerns that Iran’s ‘past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile’.1
