Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei today claimed in a meeting with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in Tehran that Iran is ready and willing to share its nuclear technology. Via the NY Times:
“Iran’s nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists,” said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.Mr. Khamenei’s comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.
If the West wasn’t in all out crisis mode over Iran’s nuclear development before, it should be now. If Iran openly exports its technology, especially to a place like Sudan, it would make it much easier for terrorist elements to attain nuclear material. It’s not so much that Bashir would actively hand nuclear secrets over to al-Qaeda or one of its subsidiaries, but I wouldn’t trust anything nuclear in an extremely volatile country where ultra-Islamist Hasan al-Turabi and his supporters walk around openly. The last thing the world needs is a North African country actively enriching its own uranium as terrorist organizations increasingly shift their central operations from the Mesopotamian hot zone to the relative backwater of Africa.
What I find rather difficult to figure out is why Khamenei is openly announcing this by way of the Islamic Republic’s state-run media. Is it a bluff designed to reiterate Tehran’s independence from the West, or something else? If anything, it’s reckless. Saudi Arabia has to be looking at its supposedly dormant nuclear program currently and moving toward a hard decision. After all, with Iranian influence spreading deep into southern Iraq, how long can the Saudis remain oblivious to Iran’s nuclear posturing? An unstable regime in the very center of the world’s most unstable region locked in a nuclear showdown is the true nightmare scenario.
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