Iran’s Not-So-Secret Secret

by the Editors

The main thing to remember about Friday’s revelation that Iran has a secret uranium-enrichment facility is that it is not a revelation.

Sure, the facts are new. They are these: In addition to a uranium-enrichment site at Natanz that international inspectors have monitored for years, Iran has been constructing a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qom. This facility is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite corps under the “Supreme Leader’s” orders and imbued with that pious zeal for which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is celebrated. It appears to be too small to be useful in enriching uranium for large-scale energy production, but would be suited to enriching it for atomic warheads. It also appears to have been designed with an eye toward avoiding detection. The IAEA has now requested access to the facility. If granted, this would be of some marginal value, but would probably achieve little more than endless procedural wrangling between inspectors and Iranian officials who specialize in hiding evidence from inspectors...

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