Bellona nuclear digest. March 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
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Publish date: October 5, 2006
News
In the letter, written in 1988 – near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq, and released by the former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – Khomeni outlines the reasons why Iran must accept a cease-fire with Iraq. It does not specifically call for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but refers indirectly to the matter by citing a letter written by the top commander of the war effort.
"The commander has said we can have no victory for another five years, and even by then we need to have 350 infantry bridges, 2,500 tanks, 300 fighter planes," the ayatollah writes, according to the Times, adding that the army would also need "a considerable number of laser and nuclear weapons to confront the attacks."
In a famous public statement a few days after penning the letter, Khomeini flip-flopped and compared accepting a cease-fire with Iraq to "drinking a chalice of poison," said the Times.
The ILNA Labour News Agency, which first published the newly discovered letter Friday, removed the word "nuclear" within a few hours, after receiving a call from the National Security Council, according to a reporter with the agency. The reporter requested anonymity for fear of official retribution. Other local wire services deleted the word as well.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic energy watchdog that Russia plans to restart Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and technicians, fueling worries about a serious nuclear accident on the front lines of a grinding military conflict.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | Brussels, Belgium – Today, the European Parliament approved the newly revised Construction Products regulation (CPR)...
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.