Iran's Nuke Admission

Iran, under fire for its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, has made surprisingly forthright admissions to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Sources familiar with Iran's declaration, which IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei will present to the agency's board this week, say it has admitted that it enriched uranium at the Kalay-e electric plant outside Tehran, in violation of its IAEA agreements. The revelation is part of a massive disclosure Tehran made in an attempt to avoid threatened sanctions for its nuclear activities. The disclosures may, if temporarily, thwart U.S. efforts to bring more international pressure on the country over the nuclear issue.

"Iran did give a load of information," says a State Department official. "It was very, very specific and very, very extensive." But Iran's declaration is still troubling. Tehran did not adequately account for highly enriched uranium on some specialized centrifuges, and it does not admit it ever intended to produce a nuclear weapon.

That fuels fears Iran still harbors nuclear ambitions. And it "raises suspicions that Iran has [another] hidden enrichment plant" or some other illicit supply of uranium, says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.