Article

Serious Concerns Shroud Iran’s Nuclear Program

By Michael Adler on November 9, 2011

The United States has already signaled that it will use the IAEA report in its continuing campaign to get tougher sanctions against Iran to force it to negotiate on its nuclear ambitions, says Public Policy Scholar Michael Adler. Washington wants to increase international pressure now that it has a documented report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog that Iran has done much more to obtain nuclear weapons than was previously known.

Bushehr nuclear power plant, south of Tehran

The United States has already signaled that it will use the IAEA report in its continuing campaign to get tough sanctions against Iran in order to force it to negotiate on its nuclear ambitions, says Public Policy Scholar Michael Adler. Washington wants to rally the international community to put pressure on Iran, and now it has a documented report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog that Iran has done much more to obtain nuclear weapons than was previously known.

The immediate fallout from the IAEA report will be a push for tougher sanctions against Iran, a policy Israel has been backing. And if the IAEA report this month does not convince, there will be another one, with more data, in February. After that, especially if Fordow becomes an inaccessible factory for producing the enriched uranium that can power a reactor but also a bomb, the Iranian nuclear crisis may be heading for its crunch time.

Read the full piece on Salon.