Written By John R. Bolton

The Valentine's Day announcement of new scientific and technological achievements in Iran’s nuclear program demonstrates the continued broadening and deepening of its capacities in this sensitive, dangerous field. While the race to achieve functional nuclear weapons is the most mesmerizing and immediately threatening aspect of Iran’s work, its continued march across the full scope of nuclear activities shows that Tehran is confident it will not soon be thwarted.

Iran is in for the long haul, belying the fancy that diplomacy or economic sanctions can work. The confirmation that the Fordo uranium-enrichment facility near Qom is fully operational and that its first domestically manufactured fuel rods are installed in the Tehran Research Reactor shows Iran steadily mastering the nuclear-fuel cycle. Perhaps we will next hear that the Arak heavy-water production facility is completed and functioning and that the nearby heavy-water reactor will, in fact, be inaugurated in 2013. Or that Iran’s ballistic-missile program has launch-tested vehicles capable of reaching targets in the Western Hemisphere.

Each successive step underscores that Iran’s carefully planned, systematic and increasingly operational nuclear infrastructure is not designed simply to show defiance of Western opposition and sanctions, as some contend. Remember, for example, the flurry of optimism about proposals to exchange Iran’s existing supply of low-enriched uranium so that a foreign nation could manufacture fuel rods for the Tehran reactor. Iran swatted away that initiative, not least because manufacturing fuel rods domestically always was part of its larger strategy to widen and intensify its nuclear capability.

Iran’s slow and... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/22/irans-relentless-nuclear...