Green Salt

Elaine Shannon in Time has more detail on Iran’s covert military effort to produce uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) or “Green Salt.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped firm up support for the IAEA vote by having aides brief foreign officials on a trove of documents that, according to U.S. diplomatic sources, expose a clandestine Iranian military nuclear-research operation. The documents, found in 2004 on a laptop computer, which U.S. intelligence believes came from an Iranian engineer, contain data on tests for high explosives, a design for a missile re-entry vehicle and a diagram of a green-salt production line. Separately, those areas of research could imply fairly benign intentions. But if an Iranian military agency has been coordinating all the research, the U.S. assessment is “you’re talking about a nuclear-tipped missile,” says a senior official with access to the intelligence reports.