WASHINGTON, Dec 13: The White House on Friday expressed suspicions about two Iranian nuclear sites, alleging both could produce key elements of atomic weapons and serve no reasonable civilian energy purpose.

“We have serious concerns about this,” said spokesman Ari Fleischer. “Such facilities are simply not justified by the needs that Iran has for their civilian nuclear programmes.”

The official said Iran’s rich oil and natural gas resourced make the facilities superfluous, and that the two facilities could be designed to yield key components of nuclear weapons.

“The suspect uranium enrichment plant could be used to produce highly enriched uranium for weapons.

The heavy water plant could support a reactor for producing weapons grade plutonium,” he told reporters.—AFP