World leaders accuse Iran of building secret nuclear facility

President Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Nicolas Sarkozy, accused Iran this morning of building a secret underground nuclear plant, saying it has hidden the covert operation for years.

U.S. officials said that while the plant is not up and running, it could be in operation next year, reports The New York Times. One administration official told The Times, “They have cheated three times and they have now been caught three times.” President Obama, along with Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, announced this morning in Pittsburgh that Iran has kept an underground nuclear fuel facility a secret for years now. The president demanded that Iran allows the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility in which Iran says production is taking place. The U.S. has been tracking Iran's nuclear program for awhile but today President Obama decided to go public with the findings after Iran recently discovered Western intelligence had become aware of their secret project. In a statement from its Vienna headquarters on Friday, the I.A.E.A. confirmed that Tehran had informed it on Monday that “a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country” The New York Times reports “The Agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility” said spokesman Marc Vidicaire. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing about the covert facility to the United Nations this week although he repeated his assertion that Iran had fully cooperated with inspectors and that the allegations of a nuclear weapons program are fabrications.