PITTSBURGH — President Obamaand the leaders of Britain and France accused Iranon Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.Appearing before reporters in Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” Presidentof France said that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands or faceincreased sanctions.
“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime MinisterGordon Brownof Britain said. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.” Iran’s president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismissed the accusation that his country kept the plant hidden, saying at an afternoon news conference in New York that what Iran did was “completely legal.”He said Mr. Obama would regret his statement that the plant near the holy city of Qum, which is 100 miles southwest of Tehran, was being hidden.“At the end of the day, this is a very ordinary facility that has been set up, and it’s only in the beginning stages,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said.Nonetheless, at a late afternoon at a news conference Mr. Obama issued a more forceful warning to Iran to “come clean” about its use of nuclear power.“Our preferred method of action is diplomatic, but if that does not work, then other consequences may follow,” he said, adding that those would be “sanctions that have bite.”The extraordinary and hastily arranged joint appearance by the three Western leaders on Friday morning — and Mr. Obama said that ChancellorAngela Merkelof Germany had asked him to convey that she stood with them as well — adds urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambition to build anuclear weaponscapacity. The three men demanded that Iran allow theInternational Atomic Energy Agencyto conduct an immediate inspection of the facility.
American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to disclose the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the complex. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.In a statement from its headquarters in Vienna on Friday, the atomic agency confirmed that it had been told on Monday by Iran that “a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country.” The I.A.E.A. said it had requested more information about the plant and access to it as soon as possible. “The agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility,” the statement said.Hours after Mr. Obama’s announcement, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, confirmed in a statement that Iran was building a “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility,” designed to produce nuclear fuel, that it had not previously announced to international authorities, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
Mr. Salehi defended the newly disclosed facility, ISNA reported, calling it a “huge and successful step, which is in line with development of our country’s nuclear industry,” and adding that its activities “were within the framework of International Atomic Energy Agency’s regulations.” But as described by American and European officials, the facility is too small to be of industrial use and was designed specifically to be concealed.Mr. Ahmadinejad, said nothing about the plant during his visit this week to theUnited Nations, where he repeated his contention that Iran had cooperated fully with inspectors and that allegations of a nuclear weapons program are fabrications. In a Thursday statement, the Iranian mission to the United Nations called such allegations “preposterous.” The newly discovered enrichment plant is not yet in operation, American officials said, but could be by next year. A senior Western official characterized the facility as “excavation, tunneling, infrastructure for centrifuges.”Mr. Obama’s announcement overshadowed the meeting of theGroup of 20, whose leaders gathered to plan the next steps in combating the global financial crisis. Instead, here and during the opening of the United Nations in New York, senior officials from several of the countries were pulled aside for briefings on the new intelligence and for strategy sessions about the first direct talks with Iran in 30 years — set for Thursday — that will include the United States.American officials said they expected the announcement to make it easier to build a case for international sanctions if Iran blocked inspectors or refused to halt its nuclear program.