by Eli Leon, news agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Tehran moves to speed up nuclear program despite sanctions, further fueling Western concerns over its nuclear advances • "A decade of diplomatic efforts has failed," Western diplomat says.
Iranian news reports the
country's nuclear progress.
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Photo credit: Press TV screen grab  |
Iran is increasing the number of advanced
uranium enrichment centrifuges installed at its Natanz underground
plant, despite tightening international sanctions aimed at stopping
Tehran's nuclear progress, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.
For years, Iran has been trying to develop
centrifuges that are more efficient than the erratic 1970s era IR-1
machines it now uses, but efforts to introduce new models have been
dogged by technical hurdles and difficulty in obtaining key parts
abroad.
If launched and operated successfully, the new
centrifuges would enable the Islamic Republic to sharply speed up
sensitive atomic activity, which it says is for peaceful energy purposes
but which the West fears may be aimed at building nuclear bombs.
"It is clear Iran can build them. The question
is how many and how good they are," one Western envoy said. Another
envoy commented: "A decade of diplomatic efforts has failed."
The planned deployment of next-generation
centrifuges underlines Iran's refusal to bow to pressure to curb its
nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the
dispute diplomatically and avoid a spiral into war.
In early March, Iran announced that it would
build about 3,000 advanced centrifuges. But experts and diplomats said
it was unclear whether it had the capability and materials needed to
make so many, and also to run them smoothly.
Although still far from the target number, one
diplomatic source estimated that roughly 500 to 600 so-called IR-2m
centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had now been put in place at
the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran. According to a report
issued in February by the U.N. nuclear watchdog two months ago there
were only 180. At the same time, Iran had more than 12,000
old-generation centrifuges installed at Natanz, but not all were
enriching.
Two other envoys in Vienna, where the U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency is based, also said the number of
installed IR-2m machines was growing but they did not have details. The
next IAEA report on Iran is expected in late May.
The diplomats said the new centrifuges were
not yet operational, but the increase in installation was still likely
to add to Western alarm over Iran's nuclear advances.
The most recent round of nuclear negotiations
held between Iran and world powers in Kazakhstan in early April failed
to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, and the United States and Israel
have not ruled out military action to prevent Tehran from obtaining
nuclear weapons.
If hundreds of new centrifuges have indeed
been installed, "it indicates that Iran has made a significant
breakthrough both in mastering the technology and in acquiring the raw
materials," said nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.
"This development will be of major concern to
countries that are worried about Iran's growing ability to quickly
produce nuclear weapons."
Iran had previously been believed to face a
shortage of the high strength metals necessary to produce the new
centrifuges in large numbers, but the installations suggest that Iran
possesses both the technology and the raw materials to mass-produce
centrifuges that can enrich uranium much faster than the more than
12,000 inefficient machines now making up the backbone of its enrichment
program.
The United States, Israel, and their allies
say Tehran's nuclear secrecy and suspicions they shared with the IAEA
that Iran may have worked secretly on nuclear arms makes them fear Iran
may use the technology to create weapons-level uranium that can be used
in an atomic bomb.
Former IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen
recently said that Tehran could install 3,000 advanced centrifuges at
Natanz within nine months from the startup date.
Eli Leon, news agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8691
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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