by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Raphael Ofek
According to Olli Heinonen, who served until 2010 as IAEA deputy director general, Iran will be in a position to acquire nuclear weapons within six to eight months.
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| Anti-aircraft guns guarding Natanz Nuclear Facility, Isfahan Province, Iran, image via Wikipedia |
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,207, June 24, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Iran
is threatening to resume its uranium enrichment effort to the point that
it will be able to produce a nuclear bomb. According to Olli Heinonen,
who served until 2010 as IAEA deputy director general, Iran will be in a
position to acquire nuclear weapons within six to eight months.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano confirmed on
June 10 that Iran is realizing its threat to increase its rate of
uranium enrichment, in direct defiance of the terms of the nuclear
agreement of 2015 (JCPOA).
On May 7, Tehran threatened that if no solution
was found to the problem of US sanctions, it would ignore the
restrictions on uranium enrichment placed on it by the nuclear agreement
and enrich up to 20%. Two weeks later, on May 21, Iranian Atomic Energy
Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said the uranium enrichment
capability at the Natanz plant had increased fourfold. As a result, Iran
may soon exceed the limitation on the amount of uranium it is allowed
to enrich under the JCPOA.
Former IAEA deputy director general Olli Heinonen
recently stated, during a visit to Israel, that he believes Iran will be
in a position to acquire nuclear weapons within six to eight months. He
later clarified his remarks, explaining that he was referring to the
time needed to enrich uranium in the quantity and quality required to
produce a nuclear bomb.
Heinonen served as the IAEA’s deputy director
general and was head of its inspection department in the last decade. He
was considered a hawk on the matter of Iran’s nuclear program, in
contrast to the feeble position toward Tehran taken by the previous IAEA
DG, the Egyptian Muhammad al-Baradei.
Heinonen’s conclusion about Iran’s proximity to
the nuclear weapons threshold apparently stems from an assessment of its
capabilities in two areas: first, its uranium enrichment capacity today
versus its capabilities before the nuclear deal was signed on July 14,
2015; and second, the progress it has made since 2003 in the development
of nuclear explosive devices in the AMAD program. That program was
intended to produce five 10-kiloton nuclear bombs (the size of the
Hiroshima bomb in WWII) which could then be fitted onto the Shahab-3
ballistic missile warhead. This program was revealed when the Iranian
nuclear archive was smuggled out by Israel.
After 2003, the nuclear program underwent various
organizational changes in order to disguise its characteristics. It has
operated since 2011 within the framework of the SPND organization.
According to the IAEA’s reports on Iran from
2013-14, before the nuclear deal was signed, the uranium enrichment
plant in Natanz contained the following:
- 15,420 centrifuges from Iran’s first IR1 design, which enriched natural uranium to about 3.5% (nuclear fuel of power reactor grade)
- 328 IR1 centrifuges enriching uranium from 3.5% to 20% (nuclear fuel of research reactor grade)
- 1,008 more advanced centrifuges of the IR2m design (which apparently has twice as much enrichment capacity as the IR1 design). These centrifuges have not yet been activated
In addition, 2,710 IR1 centrifuges were installed
at the Fordow enrichment facility, of which 696 were activated prior to
the nuclear deal. They also enriched uranium from 3.5% to 20%.
It is reasonable to assume that if Iran breaks the
nuclear agreement, it will – as soon as possible – restart all the
centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordow, as well as the advanced IR6
and IR8 models centrifuges that were developed in recent years.
(According to Iranian experts, the enrichment capacity of IR8 is 20
times greater than that of IR1.) Based on data published by the IAEA, it
can be roughly estimated that if Iran breaks the nuclear deal, it will
be able to enrich uranium to about 20% at the rate of about 450
kilograms per year. It would then enrich the 20% uranium to 90% (the
level of enrichment required to produce a nuclear weapon core) in the
quantity of 200 to 250 kilograms – sufficient to produce more than 10
nuclear bombs a year.
Based on the assumption that the time needed for
Iran to restart a full-scale uranium enrichment project is three to four
months, and adding a month or two for the production of enriched
uranium cores in the form of hollow hemispheres, it can be estimated
that within half a year, Iran may have at least enough fissile material
for one core of a nuclear weapon, and perhaps even more.
The IAEA has tried to monitor Iran’s facilities
associated with the production or use of nuclear materials, in
accordance with the NPT. However, it has not been able to uncover Iran’s
secret activities in the various areas of development of a nuclear
explosive device and installation of a ballistic missile. Most of the
information gathered by the IAEA in these areas was received from
Western intelligence services.
The most significant breakthrough in exposing the
Iranian nuclear program was Israel’s Iranian archive operation.
Documents in that archive indicate that as long ago as 2003 and 2004,
Iran made great progress in its nuclear effort, far beyond what the
Western intelligence services and the IAEA estimated at the time. Had
the information in the archive been exposed before the signing of the
JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015, a better agreement would have been signed.
The Iranian nuclear archive operation and a
comprehensive description of its contents were revealed by PM Benjamin
Netanyahu on April 30, 2018. From October 2018 through May 21, 2019, the
Washington Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS),
headed by David Albright, presented a series of highly detailed reports
on the contents of the archive, including information about secret
facilities that had not yet been exposed. In addition to Albright and
others, Heinonen was also involved in these revelations.
Key elements of the nuclear program were conducted
at the Parchin military site, about 30 kilometers north of Tehran. The
IAEA was informed in 2004 of the possibility that the site was
conducting activities related to the development of nuclear weapons, and
asked Iran to allow its inspectors to patrol it. At first, Iran evaded
the request by claiming that it wanted to maintain military field
security, as Parchin was a military base. However, in January 2005, it
granted the inspectors partial access to a few buildings on the site.
The inspectors did not find any evidence of
suspicious activity at Parchin. On their second visit (November 2005),
which also involved only a small part of the site, they took soil
samples. The IAEA’s subsequent testing of those samples did not
substantiate suspicions of nuclear activity at Parchin.
But in 2011, the IAEA received new reports that Parchin was testing explosives related to the development of nuclear weapons.
In May 2012, suspicious activity was detected at
Parchin through satellite photographs: the Iranians had destroyed some
of the buildings they had forbidden IAEA inspectors to visit in 2005.
Not only that: they completely razed the areas surrounding where the
buildings had stood.
It was not until September 2015, after the signing
of the nuclear deal, that Iran allowed IAEA inspectors to revisit
Parchin. Once again, the inspectors took soil samples, and once again,
the IAEA’s lab tests revealed nothing.
The samples were reexamined in US labs, however,
and found to contain a few uranium particles – proof that Parchin had
indeed seen nuclear activity.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-close-nuclear-threshold/
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