Friday
Apr102009
Iran's Pride: Ahmadinejad Speech on Nuclear Programme
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 7:52
Related Post: Extract from Ahmadinejad Speech, Delegate Walkout at Durban Conference
A day after the Obama Administration announced that its officials would join Iran and other countries in direct talks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on National Nuclear Technology Day. Would this stop the American approach before it really started?
No.
Ahmadinejad, speaking from the historic city of Isfahan, highlighted the progress at the Bushehr plant with "the packaging of fuel and making the fuel ready to be put inside the reactor". The second achievement was the testing of two new types of centrifuges with a capacity "several times greater" than Iran's existing equipment.
The statement didn't announce, as some expected, that Bushehr was already operational. Ahmadinejad's reference on new centrifuges was too vague to prompt any shift in current intellligence estimates. Most importantly, there was nothing in the speech to indicate a move in Iran's programme toward military, rather than civilian, uses of nuclear energy.
So US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the new American position was unaltered, ""We do not attribute any particular meaning with respect to the range of issues that we are looking to address with the Iranians from this particular statement." Translation? Those issues, from Afghanistan to Iraq to other Middle Eastern discussions, are too important to be set aside for confrontation over Iran's nuclear plans. Instead, Clinton continued:
So the US-Iran engagement, while not exactly love and bliss, continues.
A day after the Obama Administration announced that its officials would join Iran and other countries in direct talks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on National Nuclear Technology Day. Would this stop the American approach before it really started?No.
Ahmadinejad, speaking from the historic city of Isfahan, highlighted the progress at the Bushehr plant with "the packaging of fuel and making the fuel ready to be put inside the reactor". The second achievement was the testing of two new types of centrifuges with a capacity "several times greater" than Iran's existing equipment.
The statement didn't announce, as some expected, that Bushehr was already operational. Ahmadinejad's reference on new centrifuges was too vague to prompt any shift in current intellligence estimates. Most importantly, there was nothing in the speech to indicate a move in Iran's programme toward military, rather than civilian, uses of nuclear energy.
So US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the new American position was unaltered, ""We do not attribute any particular meaning with respect to the range of issues that we are looking to address with the Iranians from this particular statement." Translation? Those issues, from Afghanistan to Iraq to other Middle Eastern discussions, are too important to be set aside for confrontation over Iran's nuclear plans. Instead, Clinton continued:
It would benefit the Iranians, in our view, if they cooperated with the international community, if they abided by a set of obligations and expectations that effect them and by which we believe they are bound -- and we are going continue to insist on that.
So the US-Iran engagement, while not exactly love and bliss, continues.