Obama official: Iran medical isotopes claim a “transparent ploy”

The Iranian regime’s February decision to increase the level of its uranium enrichment to nearly 20 percent reveals that Iran’s claims that it needs to enrich uranium for medical use is a "transparent ploy," a top Obama administration official said Tuesday.

"It has nothing to do with trying to help Iranian cancer patients who will need medical isotopes later this year," Dan Poneman, the deputy energy secretary, told an audience Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, adding that the decision was "a provocative move that calls into question its nuclear intentions."

"We have even offered to facilitate Iran’s procurement though world markets of the medical isotopes its citizens need," he said, "but there’s been no follow-up and Iran has refused to discuss its nuclear program further, despite the Geneva understanding."

The Obama administration offered Iran a deal to exchange nuclear material in a third country in order to fuel the Tehran Research Reactor, the U.S.-built facility where the enrichment is suspected to be taking place, but the IAEA has still never received a formal response. "It’s out there. It has not been formally withdrawn," Poneman said.

He also launched the opening salvo in what many believe will be a bitter confrontation between the United States and Iran when the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty comes up for discussion in a major review conference in May. Iran is poised to disrupt the conference significantly by raising objections to any U.S. initiatives and generally working to thwart any attempts to address what Western powers see as its clear failure to comply with the treaty.

"Iran essentially has not been in compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement since 1982," Poneman said, referring to Iran’s pattern of undeclared nuclear material, facilities, and experiments.

"In the case of Iran, it does not appear that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes," he added. "The NPT does not contain the right to pursue nuclear efforts of this character. After all it is the nuclear non-proliferation treaty."

Poneman said the latest IAEA report on Iran "clearly shows Iran’s continued failure to live up to its international obligations."