Nuclear watchdog: Iran is testing centrifuges

Support for Russia's offer
The United States and the European Union have backed the Russian offer to host Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

But the report made available Monday showed Iran pressing ahead with enrichment at home by going from testing a lone centrifuge — a machine that spins uranium gas into enriched uranium — to introducing the gas into 10 centrifuges and beginning enrichment between Feb. 11 and Feb 15.

Furthermore, said the report, Iran began final maintenance of an additional 20 centrifuges a week ago, reflecting determination to further expand enrichment.

That would leave Iran still far short of the thousands of centrifuges it needs to enrich substantial amounts of uranium. Still, it reflected the country’s plans to forge ahead with domestic enrichment even as it talks with Moscow.

And just a few months down the road, “commencement of the installation of the first 3,000 ... (centrifuges) is planned for the fourth quarter of 2006,” said the report.

Experts estimate that Iran already has enough black-market components in storage to build the 1,500 operating centrifuges it would need to make the 45 pounds of highly enriched uranium needed for one crude weapon.

The report also repeated appeals for Iran to cooperate that have been a staple of the more than a dozen documents produced by ElBaradei on the status of the probe into Tehran’s nuclear program.

Detailing some of Iran’s foot dragging over the past month, as well as new findings of concern, the report said:

• “Iran again declined to provide” a copy of a document located earlier by IAEA inspectors showing how to cast fissile uranium into the shape to fit a warhead.
• There were “inconsistencies” in tests of plutonium isotopes provided to the agency to help it look into plutonium separation experiments in the mid-1990s, suggesting that not all plutonium had been accounted for.
• Iran dismissed information based on U.S. intelligence documenting links between the so-called “Green Salt Project” — a precursor of uranium enrichment — with nuclear-related high explosives and warhead design as “based on false and fabricated documents.”

“It is regrettable and a matter of concern that the ... uncertainties related to the scope of nature of Iran’s nuclear program have not been clarified after three years of intensive agency verification,” said the report.

“Without full transparency ... the agency’s ability to reconstruct the history of Iran’s past program and verify the correctness and completeness of statements made by Iran ... will be limited and questions about the past and current direction of Iran’s nuclear program will continue to be raised.”

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