Iran Is Seen Advancing Nuclear Bid
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Version 0 of 1. International nuclear inspectors reported on Wednesday that Iran had increased its nuclear production while negotiations with the West dragged on this spring, but the new information suggested that Tehran had not gone past the “red line” that Israel’s leaders have declared could incite military action. In its last report before Iranian elections next month, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had made progress across the board in its nuclear program, enriching more uranium and installing hundreds of next-generation centrifuges that could speed enrichment. Obama administration officials acknowledged in interviews and public testimony last week that such equipment could significantly reduce the “break out” time required for Iran to produce a crude nuclear device. But they said that despite the new equipment, they remained confident that the United States and Israel would have enough time to act to halt the production of a weapon if Iran decided to build one. “We think we’d have a number of months,” a senior Israeli military official said in an interview recently. “And that’s just barely enough.” The report appeared at a moment of hiatus in diplomacy with Iran. Early hopes for progress toward a negotiated solution collapsed in a set of talks with the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France. But the Obama administration decided not to let that collapse cause a diplomatic crisis or new threats of military action. “It’s not the right time,” one senior administration official said last week. “There is still time for negotiation, even if the window is closing.” Wendy R. Sherman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told Congress last week that she believed the United States would re-engage with Iran after the elections, for which presidential candidates who might challenge the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were disqualified on Tuesday. Although the report is written in the dry, numerical accounting of nuclear inspectors, it lays out an ever-increasing rate of uranium production over the last quarter. Over just those three months, it said, Iran increased its total stock of low-enriched uranium by almost 8 percent, to nearly 10 tons. The report also gives details that point to an emerging production strategy by the Iranians. The first element is a stepped-up pace for enriching uranium 235, the fuel for reactors that can also, with additional enrichment, be used for weapons. The current pace demonstrates clearly that whatever setbacks Iran suffered from cyberattack on its facilities, part of a covert program by the United States and Israel, its efforts appear to have recovered. The second element appears to be a move to take most of the fuel that Iran is enriching to 20 percent purity — most of the way to bomb grade — and convert it from a gas to a metal oxide. Iran says that is the first step for fabricating reactor fuel. But it also has slowed the moment when Iran will cross the line set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last year at the United Nations — enough medium-enriched fuel to produce a bomb. Mr. Netanyahu has indicated that he does not expect Israel’s decision point on taking military action to come until fall or winter. The third element of the strategy involves speeding ahead with another potential route to a bomb: producing plutonium. The energy agency’s report indicated that Iran was making significant progress at its Arak complex, where it has built a heavy-water facility and is expected to have a reactor running by the end of next year. The plutonium from that reactor could also provide fuel. The report said the Iranians, since the agency’s last quarterly report in February, had added 1,395 total centrifuges and centrifuge casings to the country’s atomic complex in the desert at Natanz, bringing the total number of machines at the main fuel manufacturing plant to 14,244. Centrifuges spin extraordinarily fast to accumulate the rare form of uranium that can fuel nuclear reactors or bombs. For the West, the new centrifuges of greatest concern are IR-2s, short for Iranian second generation. They are roughly four times more powerful than the aging model that Iran has relied on for years, and promise to greatly expand the nation’s capacity to enrich uranium. Still, the report said Iran had yet to start using any of the advanced units, now totaling 689 at the main Natanz plant, for uranium enrichment. |