President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has consistently declared that Iran has the right as a sovereign nation to develop a nuclear program. He has insisted over the years that their aim is for the peaceful use of nuclear power. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors the globe from its headquarters in Vienna for potential diversions of nuclear materials from civil to military programs. The departing head of the agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, recently reported that Iran has refused for two years to answer his inspectors’ questions about evidence pointing toward the design of nuclear weapons systems.

In September, the world learned of a secret Iranian nuclear enrichment facility at Qum, deep in the tunnels near a Revolutionary Guard base. Iran described the Qum site as a uranium enrichment plant still under construction. The main nuclear plant at Natanz has been known for years and under surveillance by IAEA inspectors on a regular basis. At the time the Qum site was revealed, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke bluntly on ABC, calling Qum “part of a pattern of deception and lies on the part of the Iranians from the very beginning with respect to their nuclear program. My personal opinion is that the Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons.” For years, Iran has deflected requests to interview key scientists, and redirected the international inspectors from dozens of places to the single site at Natanz.

Iran met with the leading Western powers in Geneva in October and offered to allow inspectors into the Qum facility and agreed to send its low-enriched fuel to Russia to be processed further. However, in the weeks that followed they backed away from these cooperative positions that had been seen as a major breakthrough by the United States, Britain and France. It also served to remind the world that Iran had test-fired missiles in late September with sufficient range to strike parts of Europe, Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf. Tehran insisted it was improving its defenses. “Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran,” a senior Revolutionary Guard official said to the Fars news agency. Tensions escalated between Iran and the West, culminating in three United Nations’ Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran stop all enrichment activity. By the end of November, the IAEA directed Iran to stop work on the enrichment plant at Qum.

On November 30, President Ahmadinejad angrily refused to comply with the United Nations demand to cease work at Qum. He went on to declare that Iran would build ten more nuclear plants in the years ahead. He also ordered a study of resources needed to enrich Iran’s existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor. This step set aside the earlier tentative agreement to depend on Russia or any other nation to further enrich the fuel. Both Russia and China, historically opposed to sanctions, had voted in favor of the IAEA resolution for Iran to stop work at Qum. The White House reacted to Ahmadinejad’s defiant declaration when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.”

Three days after telling the world that Iran would build ten more nuclear plants, President Ahmadinejad upped the ante another notch. On December 2, he said that Iran would produce a higher grade of nuclear fuel on its own despite strong warnings from the United Nations that its program violates its commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He told a cheering crowd in Isfahan, “I declare here that, with the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent fuel and anything it needs itself.” Iran has said in the past that the 20 percent uranium is essential for a reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.

Uranium enriched to 20 percent also is the dividing line between what nuclear scientists call low-enriched and high-enriched uranium. Only a heavy and crude nuclear bomb could be made at 20 percent. However, the underlying threat is that enrichment could quickly accelerate to a higher grade of 80 to 90 percent used in modern nuclear warheads. Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of a group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said that Iran would need more uranium than it currently has to make a bomb with 20 percent enriched fuel. “That’s not the risk. The risk is that it would be relatively easy for Iran to further enrich that material to something that is usable in a nuclear weapon.”

On December 4, Iran announced that it would keep plans for ten new enrichment plants secret until six months before they were ready to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel. This was the third declaration in defiance of IAEA within five days, and continued to raise concerns over the intent of their nuclear program. Iran was breaking the agreement signed in 2003 by all states accepting the IAEA help – that the state would inform the agency of new plants “as soon as the decision to construct or to authorize construction had been taken, whichever is earlier.”

The United States, Britain, France and the United Nations fear that Iran may be leading up to withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty. North Korea took that drastic step in 2003 and has produced the fuel for eight or more nuclear weapons since then. If Iran were to withdraw from the treaty, it would be a signal that it could be heading for “nuclear breakout,” a rush to produce a bomb. This in turn would build more pressure for severe United Nations’ sanctions and could provoke Israel to make a preemptive military strike on Natanz. Certain Western nuclear experts downplay the Iranian ten plant declaration as an empty boast. “They’re hyping it,” said David Albright, president of the group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation. “They couldn’t build that number of centrifuges. They don’t have the infrastructure. The result would be one small plant somewhere that they’re not going to tell us about.” Let’s hope he is right.

Joyce S. Anderson is the author of “Courage in High Heels,” “Flaw in the Tapestry,” “If Winter Comes” and “The Mermaids Singing.” She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.