Paris – Iranian officials made clear Tuesday that international outrage at North Korea’s test of a nuclear bomb would not deter them from moving ahead with their own nuclear program.
Indeed, the North Korean test comes as a relief to Iran because it takes the focus off their program and channels American ire toward North Korea, analysts said.
They added that the international community’s uncertainty about how to punish North Korea seems to have reinforced the belief of Iran’s leaders that they have little to fear by proceeding with their nuclear program, vindicating their decision to resist international pressure to suspend it.
The U.S. government says officially that Iran is as many as 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, but Israeli intelligence analysts and evidence from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that Iran could detonate a device much sooner.
A former American nuclear-weapons expert with access to the latest intelligence said that Iran was within a year or less of being able to set off a test explosion.
Iran has insisted that its effort to enrich uranium is aimed only at peaceful uses.
Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for a reactor. When enriched to a higher level, uranium can be used to make a bomb.
Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Iran will insist on its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to develop the nuclear fuel cycle for civilian purposes.
“Our policy is clear … insisting on the nation’s right without any retreat,” state television quoted Khamenei saying to a meeting of high-ranking government officials.
Two years ago, the Islamic republic tried the path of negotiation, suspended its enrichment program and got nothing for it, Khamenei said.
Now, he added, the program would proceed full bore.
“Two years ago (when) we started suspending uranium enrichment, if we didn’t experience that path, we would have blamed ourselves for not testing that path,” he said.
“But today, we are going ahead with courage because no one can provide an acceptable reason why Iran’s nuclear path is wrong.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a strong supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, echoed the cleric’s thoughts, telling the group that Iran’s most recent proposal to negotiate with European countries and the United States was as far as the country would go.
Longtime Iran watchers in the U.S. say the Iranian leadership has drawn lessons from watching North Korea as well as India and Pakistan, which tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
India and Pakistan were severely censured at the time, and the United States initially imposed stiff economic penalties against both.
