“Show her the new centrifuges.”

April 12, 2008

UPDATED below (even better pictures)
—

Rice said she could not verify "one way or another" what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said this week about apparent advances in Tehran’s nuclear program.
New Iran incentives, sanctions unlikely now -Rice, April 11, 2008

The Iranian President heard of Rice’s dilemma and said: "Show her the new centrifuges."

Via Jeffrey Lewis:

[T]he Office of Iran’s President
released almost fifty photographs of Ahmadinejad hanging out among
centrifuges, including a couple of shots of him cradling a carbon fiber
rotor casing for the IR-2.
…
[T]he pictures are available on on the Iranian President’s website.

In case you want direct links, the images are:

http://www.president.ir/piri/media/mid/28832.jpg
through
http://www.president.ir/piri/media/mid/28881.jpg

IR-2s are the new generation of Uranium enrichment centrifuges with carbon-fiber rotors (the black cylinder above) Iran has announced to install.

Nice PR coup …

UPDATE:

Just chatted with Ahmadinejad and lamented that these pictures are only low resolution and too small. He told me to use the URLs:

http://www.president.ir/piri/media/main/28832.jpg
through
http://www.president.ir/piri/media/main/28881.jpg

to get the high resolution, full format pictures. They load a bit slower though.

Here are the best shots in low res:

The Iranian blue foot tribe walking the tracks.
A centrifuge rotor comparison: aluminium vs. carbon-fiber. When mounted one can easily tell apart centrifuges of type 1 vs. type 2 as the older ones are slim and large and the newer ones thicker and shorter. A carbon fiber rotor – two of these get stacked for one centrifuge. Such then get installed into cacades and when running are supervised via control stations.
All of this under the watchful lenses of the wall-mounted IAEA cameras.
Two bad that there are only two women in all these pictures. Why is that?

But yes, Ms. Secretary, it’s all very secretive stuff Iran is doing. This guy is laughing about you.

Posted by b on April 12, 2008 at 10:30 UTC | Permalink

Comments

might be that Iran wants to establish the inevitability of its nuclear project before the next US administration takes seat.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Apr 12 2008 16:27 utc | 1

Two bad that there are only two women in all these pictures. Why is that?
b, both of the links in this sentence link to the same photo.
thanks btw

Posted by: annie | Apr 12 2008 17:04 utc | 2

thanks annie – I have corrected the link.
@1 – jony_b_cool – might be that Iran wants to establish the inevitability of its nuclear project before the next US administration takes seat
I believe that is already established.
The aim here seems to be to counter the U.S. attempt to make the Iranian program look secretive and dubious.
Rice is trying to mark the Iranian announcements as something uncertain and nefarious while at the same time she certainly has enough information through IAEA reports and U.S. spys to know that these are simply true.
Iran counters this by publishing such pictures even though they might give away this or that little secret. (Like who supllied what to the installation).
It’s a clever move in my view.

Posted by: b | Apr 12 2008 18:56 utc | 3

timely too. nice photo ops

Posted by: annie | Apr 12 2008 18:58 utc | 4

Centrifuges, eh? This should teach them:
Bomb explosion at mosque packed with worshippers in southern Iran kills at least 9

A bomb explosion in a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers in southern Iran killed at least nine people and injured more than 100 on Saturday, local media reported.
The semi-official Fars news agency said the explosion in the city of Shiraz went off as a cleric was delivering his weekly speech against extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Bahai faith.
(snip)

Shiraz, the capital of Fars province, neighboring Bushehr, perched above the Persian Gulf, close enough to Khuzestan…

Posted by: Alamet | Apr 12 2008 23:43 utc | 5

b@3
I agree with your assessment

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Apr 13 2008 7:20 utc | 6

Report reveals Iran seized British sailors in disputed water

timesonline.co.uk — Fifteen British sailors and Marines were seized by Iran in internationally disputed waters and not in Iraq ’s maritime territory as Parliament was told, according to new official documents released to The Times…

I smell another case for the U.S. to present in front of the the U.N. security council on the “many” reasons we have for going to war against Iran. Dr. Condoleezza Rice is probably prepping her powerpoint already.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 18 2008 5:10 utc | 7

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