Statement by Assistant Secretary Philip J. Crowley on the Fueling of the Bushehr Plant (Excerpts)

October 26, 2010

Weapon Program: 

  • Nuclear

Related Country: 

  • Russia

. . .

QUESTION: All right. Do you have any thoughts, concerns, angry statements to make about the latest developments at Bushehr?

MR. CROWLEY: I'm - there's nothing new here. We recognize that the Bushehr reactor is designed to provide civilian nuclear power and we do not view it as a proliferation risk because it is under IAEA safeguards and because Russia is providing both the needed fuel and then taking back the spent nuclear fuel, which would be the principal source of our proliferation concerns.

What is interesting about Bushehr is that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability to generate civilian nuclear energy if its intentions are purely peaceful. And Russia's supply of fuel, we think, is a model that Iran should follow in its ambition for civilian nuclear energy.

But this should not be confused with our ongoing and the world's fundamental concerns about Iran's violations of international nuclear obligations, particularly in pursuit of uranium enrichment. Iran says it wants to have full control of a fuel cycle to obtain self-sufficiency, but the fact is that Iran does not have sufficient uranium reserves in the country to meet its daily goal. So this is precisely the kind of international cooperation that we think is appropriate for Iran and it undercuts Iran's rationale for why it needs to pursue its own enrichment capability.

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