Nuclear Weapons Iran

The Clinton administration expressed new worry Monday over Iran's nuclear program and whether that country has acquired the ability to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. "We will continue to work hard to block those efforts," White House national security spokesman David Leavy said. U.S. officials were not pleased with reports Friday from Moscow that Iran may order from Russia an additional three nuclear reactors for power generation.

Iran's nuclear program, once thought to have its sights set on producing a bomb by 2000, has run into roadblocks and won't hit its weapons target until well into the next decade, Israeli and other sources report. "They are going to make it in the end," a senior Israeli intelligence official said, "but it will be the middle of the next decade." The delay, the result in part of U.S.

Russian officials erupted in indignation Wednesday over U.S. sanctions imposed on three science institutes, describing accusations that they are helping Iran build nuclear weapons as unfounded and unfair. "Strong-arm measures or sanctions against our organizations are counterproductive for Russian-American relations," a dour Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov said.

A dispute between the United States and Russia over Iranian nuclear projects escalated sharply Thursday, with the Russian secret service accusing Washington of bias and suggesting that it is getting its facts wrong. The State Department raised the stakes in the dispute Wednesday, threatening to cancel lucrative satellite launch contracts unless Russia takes more decisive steps to prevent Iran from developing the ability to build a nuclear bomb.

Bristling at criticism from Washington and at home, Russian officials vowed Thursday to go ahead with sales of atomic reactors to Iran and insisted that the lucrative hard-currency transactions will not help the Iranians develop nuclear weapons. Since it was signed last month, Moscow's initial $800-million contract with Iran has become a new test of U.S.-Russian relations, already strained by the Russian military assault on the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Atomic Energy Minister Viktor N.

President Clinton, hoping to strike a blow at a rogue state, announced tough new sanctions against Iran on Sunday that ban all U.S. investment in and trade with the Mideast nation. The President said the step, which will prohibit all U.S.

As the Clinton Administration campaigned vigorously Monday against Tehran, analysts from America, Europe and the Middle East predicted that new U.S. sanctions banning trade with and investment in Iran will have little economic impact there--and might even backfire. President Clinton's decision to eliminate the last visible ties with Iran sends "an unmistakable message to friend and foe alike" that the United States is "determined to stop them," Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Monday.

Spent fuel from Iran's Russian-made reactors, potential raw material for nuclear bombs, will be returned to Russia, an Iranian nuclear official said. "We don't have any use for it," Mohammed Sadegh Ayatollahi said of the plutonium-laden byproduct of nuclear power production. The transfer would meet one of Washington's objections to Moscow's $800-million deal to complete an Iranian nuclear power plant. The U.S. government contends that Iran harbors secret intentions to produce nuclear weapons.

The two leading Republicans in Congress bluntly warned President Clinton on Sunday that there will be harsh consequences if he fails to persuade Russian leaders at the Moscow summit this week to give up their plan to sell a nuclear reactor to Iran.

A summit between President Clinton and Russia's President Boris N. Yeltsin ended Wednesday with largely cosmetic concessions from the Russians and palpable disappointment on the U.S. side. Yeltsin agreed to drop a proposed sale by Moscow of uranium-enrichment equipment to Iran and to participate in discussions about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the nations of the former Soviet empire. But these concessions were the minimum hopes of U.S.