Most worrisome to U.S. officials is Iran’s shift to a purer form of enriched uranium. Most of the country’s stockpile consists of the 5 percent enriched uranium used in nuclear power plants. But the IAEA’s new report documented a sharp rise in the production of a 20 percent enriched uranium.
Iran claims that it will use the material to make fuel rods for the country’s sole medical research reactor, but its stockpile of 20 percent uranium already far surpasses the country’s projected needs, nuclear experts say. U.S. officials note that 20 percent enriched uranium can be quickly converted to weapons-grade uranium using equipment Iran already has.
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Timeline: A look at a series of recent attacks and other moves against Iran.
The surplus grew further since the fall, the IAEA report said, as Iran added more than 78 pounds of the purer form of enriched uranium to the 163 pounds it already had, the agency said. The rate of production of the fuel tripled over the past four months, according to an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington nonprofit group that researches nuclear weapons programs.
Some nuclear experts say they suspect the new stockpiling may be an attempt by Iran to improve its bargaining position ahead of any new nuclear talks with the West.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said it was probably significant that Iran began its production of 20 percent enrichment at the underground Fordow plant before Iranian officials formally proposed a new round of nuclear talks with the so-called P5-plus-1 nations — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
“Iran is steadily creating facts in the ground, such as enrichment to 20 percent at the underground site near Qom,” Lewis said. Whatever the motivation, Iran has succeeded in “pushing this standoff toward a military confrontation that leaves Iran isolated but with the bomb.”
In a rare bright spot for Western countries, the report showed Iran continuing to struggle to perfect more advanced centrifuges that could vastly increase its rate of uranium enrichment.
“Tension and risk is moderated by the failure, or severe trouble, of Iran’s other main nuclear plank — advanced generation machines,” said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official and director of Middle East analysis for the Euraisa Group, a private consulting firm. “On balance, the report will keep tensions at a high level, but it does not change the trajectory of the crisis.”
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