
The Shocking Source of Iranian Uranium
By Mr Bill Collier- According to a New York Times item posted in November of 2014, the Russians have agreed to greatly expand their role in providing Uranium and technical support to the Iranian nuclear program. In essence, Russia is selling Uranium to Iran.
The world’s largest producer of uranium is Kazakhstan, which produces 46,2 million pounds of uranium to the US’s 4.3 million pounds per year. A total of 139.5 million pounds of uranium are produced annually. According to one estimate, a 50 kilogram bomb (around 110 pounds) would require as much as 2,000 kilograms of uranium (around 4,400 pounds). That uranium is utilized by many buyers, including a once-US-owned and now Russian-owned company called Uranium One, the world’s leading producer of nuclear materials which controls as much as 50% of US uranium production.
According to Wikipedia– Uranium One is a uranium mining company owned by the Russian government with headquarters in Toronto and operations in Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, South Africa and the United States. It is a Canadian corporation. Rosatom, a Russian State-owned enterprise, through its subsidiary ARMZ Uranium Holding, purchased the balance of a 100% stake in the firm January 2013.
By purchasing the firm, which controls up to 50% of US uranium production, the Russian government not only obtained US uranium, which is then sold on the market to a number of customers, potentially including Iran, but also the expertise of personnel in America and Canada which can be used company-wide to increase mining efficiency and production.
According to the same Wikipedia entry cited above- ARMZ took complete control of Uranium One in January 2013 in a transaction which was reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. In December 2013, an internal reorganization of Rosatom extinguished the interest of ARMZ making Uranium One a direct subsidiary of Rosatom.
This committee includes the US Secretary of State. Hilary Clinton, the current democratic front-runner in the 2016 Presidential Election, wasn’t the Secretary of State at the time.
It is the Russian parent company, ARMZ, that will be tasked with supplying uranium to the Iranians, although the amount being purchased has not been disclosed. What is certain is that Iran has enough uranium to produce dozens of nuclear bombs.
In a related scandal, Hillary Clinton has been accused of taking payments from foreign governments in exchange for currying favor from the State Department. In this instance, Clinton is accused of taking money from the same Russian-owned company that now controls up to 50% of the Uranium being produced in America. The company donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation from 2009 to 2013. The donations were not revealed publicly. You can read more about that scandal in this NYTimes article.
Whether or not the accusations against Clinton are true, the mere fact that the US State Department allowed this deal to go through, a deal which ultimately gives the Russian government control over up to 50% of American uranium production, has caused no small amount of alarm.
The issue is not just about the uranium being mined, which could potentially become part of an Iranian nuclear weapon, but the acquisition of technical means and know-how that would make the Russian government owned company more efficient at mining operations and at uranium processing in general.
The shocking truth here is that Iran gets its uranium from a Russian-government-owned company that now controls up to 50% of US uranium production. It is at least possible, either at present or in the very near future, that SOME of the higher quality US uranium now resides in Iranian centrifuges.
The potential exists for American uranium to be used in Iranian nuclear bombs aimed at American allies or, possibly, distributed to agents to attack America itself (with dirty bombs or portable nuclear bombs). Whether or not this has already come or will come to fruition, the mere fact that such an exchange could occur should give Americans pause. That the US State Department, partly under Clinton (where the process of this approval began) and partly under Kerry (who gave the final approval for the deal), would approve such a deal with these potential outcomes has many even in the intelligence community scratching their heads.
The degree to which Clinton will be tied to this remains to be seen.
Mr Bill Collier is the editor and publisher of News Scope, a digital news intelligence journal that can be found at News-Scope.com
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