COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:
The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demonized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad, according to court documents and experts who monitor proliferation.
The records show that industry scientists and Western intelligence agencies have known for decades that nuclear technology was pouring out of Europe despite national export control efforts to contain it.
Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe’s uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.
The proliferation has its roots in Europe’s own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Perhaps this explains the different degree of enthusiasm for international agreements on the part of Europe and the United States — the United States actually worries about having to comply with them, while the Europeans, unfettered by any such concerns, are free to posture.
UPDATE: And, in a related matter, we have this:
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency has found undeclared advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge parts in Iran, sources familiar with an inspection report told CNN Thursday.
The information will be included in a detailed report to be presented March 8 at a meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency governors in Vienna, Austria.
The report will say that the centrifuge equipment, found on an Iranian air force base, is not of a type that works with equipment found at nuclear sites that Iran has declared.
The report marks the first time Iran’s nuclear program has been linked directly to its military. . . .
The diplomats also said the design matched drawings of enrichment equipment found in Libya that was supplied through the network headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.
It would, I think, be very desirable for the Mullarchy in Iran to fall before it acquires nuclear weapons. I wonder if anyone else feels that way?