Despite international pressure, Iran is staying on course: A confidential report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the Islamic republic has begun installing advanced centrifuges in its main uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, confirming diplomats' accounts that Tehran has begun a major upgrade of a program that can be used to make atomic arms.
Iran denies it wants such weapons and says it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and fuel for scientific and medical purposes under international law specifically allowing such activities. But because it hid its enrichment program — and other nuclear activities — for decades, many countries fear that Tehran ultimately wants to enrich to weapons-grade level, suitable for arming nuclear warheads. U.N. sanctions and Security Council demands for a halt in enrichment have been ineffective, with Iran instead expanding the activity.
The report, circulated Thursday to the 35-nation agency board and subsequently leaked to the press, has diplomats concerned regarding Iran's intentions on the eve of the resumption of nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the West, scheduled for next week. The report also refers to "extensive" activity at the Parchin military facility where, according to intelligence assessments, Iran is testing nuclear weapons components.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that "this is a very serious report, which proves that Iran is continuing to advance rapidly toward the red line I drew," referring to a speech he made in September at the United Nations General Assembly in which he drew a red line indicating the "final stage" to a bomb and warning that the world has until next summer to stop Iran's nuclear efforts before it becomes too late.
"Iran is closer than ever to obtaining enough enriched material for a nuclear bomb," Netanyahu said Thursday. He stressed that the central issue to be discussed in his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit Israel next month, will be preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities.
Significant advances
Iran announced in January that it planned to upgrade its Natanz enrichment facility, then said earlier this month that it had started doing so. On Wednesday, diplomats told The Associated Press that upward of 100 enriching centrifuges had already been installed.
However, the IAEA report was the first independent and on-record confirmation that the work had begun and was advancing. The confidential report said IAEA inspectors saw 180 of the high-tech IR-2m centrifuges fully or partially mounted at Natanz during a Feb. 6 inspection tour.
The advance is significant both in terms of technology and timing. The IR-2ms can enrich three to five times faster than the outmoded machines now being used at Natanz. For nations fearing that Iran may want to make nuclear arms that would mean a quicker way of getting there, should Tehran actually break out of the present peaceful enrichment program it has shown the IAEA and openly work on a weapon.
The start of the upgrade is also of concern to six world powers preparing to resume talks with Iran about its nuclear program on Tuesday in Kazakhstan. They want Tehran to cut back on enrichment — but the installation of new machines instead sends the signal that the Islamic republic has no intention of doing so.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the centrifuge upgrade "yet another provocative step" that the six powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — will focus on at their upcoming talks with Iran.
"It's very hard for the international community to understand what Iran is doing, when it claims that all of this is peaceful," she told reporters.
Both she and the British Foreign Office suggested that the centrifuge installations would additionally burden already difficult nuclear negotiations with Tehran, which have led to a lack of substantial progress in previous rounds. While the U.S. and its Western allies want a rollback of enrichment before any easing of sanctions crippling Iran's oil sales and financial transactions, Tehran has refused to even consider making a move before some sanctions are removed.
Nuland said the move on the centrifuges "doesn't make it any easier to get where we want to go," while the Foreign Office, in a separate statement, said the timing "concerns and disappoints us."
It was unclear, however, how quickly Iran would proceed with the centrifuge upgrade. It hinted last month that it planned to install more than 3,000 of the new machines, and former IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen has told AP that Tehran could do that within nine months, assuming it has the components to make them.
But a senior diplomat who is familiar with the report said the agency could not tell whether Iran did in fact possess enough centrifuges — or the raw materials to make them — to reach that goal any time soon. He said the next few months will be crucial to establishing how many machines will be installed and in what time frame. The diplomat demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.
The IAEA report noted that other developments reflecting Iran's determination to expand enrichment. It said that Tehran had installed 2,255 of its mainstay IR-1 centrifuges since the last report on Nov. 16, bringing the total to 12,699 — although not all were operating.
David Albright, whose Institute for Science and International Security is often consulted by the U.S. government on proliferation issues, said that at that pace "Iran is installing the IR-1 centrifuge at a faster-than expected rate."
The report also said the number of other advanced centrifuge models being tested at an R&D site at Natanz separate from its enrichment plant had substantially increased to more than 300 as of this month.
While moving to increase the potency of its enrichment program, however, Tehran also has recently resumed converting some of its higher-level enriched uranium at into reactor fuel plates after suspending the activity last year. That is likely to provide some reassurance to nations concerned about Iran's nuclear aims because the plates are difficult to reconvert back into weapons usable material.
About 700 of the old machines at Fordo — a site separate from Natanz — are churning out higher-enriched material that is still below — but just a technical step away — from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it needs that higher-enriched level to fuel a research reactor.
With higher-enriched uranium their immediate concern, the six powers' main demand during the talks on Tuesday in Kazakhstan is the suspension of enrichment at Fordo.
About 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of that higher-enriched uranium is considered to be the standard amount needed to make 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of weapons grade uranium.
The IAEA report noted that — with the amount converted subtracted from its present stockpile — Iran now had close to 170 kilograms (375 pounds) of 20% enriched uranium. That's 15 kilograms (33 pounds) more than in November but still well below the amount needed for a weapon.
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