Iran sentences US man to death, starts nuclear work
10 January, 2012
TEHRAN: Iran announced on Monday it had sentenced a dual US-Iranian citizen to death as a spy, and diplomats said it had switched on a uranium enrichment plant deep inside a mountain, actions certain to infuriate the West.
The moves come at a time when new US sanctions are causing real economic pain, Iran has spooked oil markets with threats to international shipping, and an election in two months is widening political divisions at home. The United States denies Arizona-born 28-year-old Amir Mirza Hekmati is a spy, and has demanded his immediate release.
Iran has aired a televised confession, denounced by Washington, in which Hekmati said he worked for a New York-based video game company designing games to manipulate public opinion in the Middle East on behalf of US intelligence. "Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death for cooperating with the hostile country America and spying for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)," ISNA news agency quoted judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei as saying. "The court found him Corrupt on the Earth and Mohareb (one who wages war on God). Hekmati can appeal to the Supreme Court."
Separately, two diplomats in Vienna, where the UN nuclear watchdog is based, said Iran had finally carried out a long-planned step to begin enrichment of uranium at a site deep under a mountain near the holy city of Qom. Uranium enrichment in the Fordow bunker is probably the single most controversial part of Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is peaceful but the West says is aimed at building an atomic bomb. The long-simmering nuclear dispute has come to a boil in recent weeks, with the West imposing new sanctions that are having a real impact on Iran's economy, and Tehran responding with threats to international shipping that rattled oil markets.
Iran has remained defiant. In a televised speech on Monday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "Sanctions imposed on Iran by our enemies will not have any impact on our nation." "The Iranian nation believes in its rulers." Iran's rulers put those protests down by force but, in the two years since, the Arab Spring has shown the vulnerability of authoritarian governments in the region to uprisings fuelled by public anger over economic hardship. Iran has responded to the new sanctions by threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet for ships carrying oil from the Gulf, guarded by a huge US-led international fleet.
Iran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009 that it was building the nuclear facility beneath a mountain at Fordow, but only after learning that it had been detected by Western intelligence. Tehran says it intends to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity with centrifuges there. The West says uranium that pure is not necessary for power plants and is a step towards a bomb. "All of Iran's enrichment activity is in violation of (United Nations) Security Council resolutions and any expansion of its capacity at Fordow just compounds those violations," said a Western diplomat in Vienna.
Locating the enrichment facility inside a mountain makes it harder for Israel or the United States to destroy it. Both countries say a military option remains on the table. On Sunday an Iranian newspaper had quoted the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation as saying enrichment in the bunker would begin in the "near future".
Nuclear talks between Iran and global powers collapsed a year ago. Iran has said it wants to restart them, but the West says Tehran must first make clear it is willing to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment.
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