Western powers believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, triggering an international race to prevent it from importing more, The Times has learnt.
Diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months. Countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran.
Before Christmas, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sent out a confidential request for its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil, all major uranium producers, to lobby governments not to sell uranium products, specifically yellow cake, to Iran.
Iran’s stock of yellow cake, acquired from South Africa in the 1970s under the Shah’s original civil nuclear power programme, has almost run out. Iran is developing its own uranium mines, but does not have enough ore to support a sustained nuclear programme.
Perhaps the western nations will be able to keep yellow cake out of Iran long enough for the nation to collapse. But otherwise trying to enforce a blockade is doomed to failure.
One of the biggest problems in this case is that acquiring atomic weapons is in Iran’s national interests even apart from religious/ideological questions. Given their strategic location, the nation would be transformed into one of the big cheeses of the world the instant they got the bomb. And most nations feel that becoming big cheeses is in their national interests. Thus, temporary setbacks are unlikely to stop Iran from marching toward the bomb even if there is a change in political leadership.
By contrast, the bomb was relatively unimportant to South Africa because nobody in the world really cares if anything in Africa gets blown up. Thus, having the bomb did not increase South Africa’s power or prestige by any appreciable amount.