Source: WashingtonPost.com
By: Joby Warrick
Posted: Feb. 23rd. 2012
“We have not received your reply,” complained one telex, sent from the Tehran school’s purchasing department and written partly in broken English. “We are awaiting for hearing from you as soon as possible.”
But the telex, sent in 1992 and made public here for the first time, was not what it seemed. The real purchaser was not a university but a secretive research institute working for Iran’s military. The fluorine gas, investigators later concluded, was to be blended with uranium in a nuclear program that would remain hidden for 10 more years.
The document is part a trove of 1,600 formerly secret telexes obtained by nuclear researchers seeking to unearth the early history of Iran’s clandestine pursuit of nuclear technology. While nearly two decades old, the records offer an unusually detailed glimpse into Iran’s alleged efforts to defy sanctions to obtain sensitive technology — tactics that intelligence officials say continue even now.
Experts who studied the documents say they were struck by patterns of behavior that began early in the program and involved some of the same individuals who run the country’s nuclear efforts today, under the oversight of the same supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who came to power in 1989. The telexes and other records show Iranians using subterfuge and deception to obtain the parts they needed, and afterward issuing vigorous denials to U.N. nuclear officials, even when confronted with evidence.
Read More: WashingtonPost.com
Tags: ali khamenei, ayatollah ali khamenei, history of iran, intelligence officials, nuclear officials, sensitive technology, sharif university, supreme leader ayatollah, supreme leader ayatollah ali khamenei, telexes
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