President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced success Tuesday in Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium and demanded respect for the nation’s right to peaceful atomic energy, upping the ante in Tehran’s dispute with the West about its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials said that the country’s scientists had enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, the level needed for civilian purposes, using 164 linked centrifuges, and that the nation intends to increase the number of linked centrifuges to 3,000 by year’s end.
Western countries suspect that Iran’s ultimate goal is to make highly enriched uranium for an atomic bomb and have been insisting that Iran suspend its enrichment program. But Tuesday’s announcement will likely make it harder to persuade Iran to stop.
Iran’s declaration is a key political achievement for the country as well as a technological milestone. However, Iran is still years away from having enough low enriched uranium for power plants or the highly enriched uranium necessary to build nuclear bombs, according to diplomats and nuclear analysts. Estimates are that it would take Iran three to 10 years to build a bomb.
“I announce that our beloved Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world,” Ahmadinejad told a gathering of some of the country’s top civilian and military leaders in the northeastern city of Mashhad. “The nuclear fuel cycle has been completed at the laboratory level and uranium has been produced with suitable degree of enrichment for use in nuclear power plants. … This is the result of the Iranian nation’s resistance.”
His announcement, made with much fanfare, appeared designed to burnish Iran’s image as a scientifically advanced country and bolster Ahmadinejad’s standing at home.
Hamid Reza Taraghi, a senior aide to Ahmadinejad, said Iran no longer needs to negotiate and is handing Western powers and the International Atomic Energy Agency a “fait accompli.”
“I believe there is no longer any need for negotiations. All we need to discuss with [IAEA chief Mohamed] ElBaradei is to ensure continued cooperation of the IAEA in its observer capacity to confirm that our activities are peaceful in the purposes,” he said.
Criticism from U.S.
Thousands of centrifuges, operating in cascades, are needed for large-scale production. Uranium gas enriched to a low level can be used to generate electricity, or, if technological adjustments are made and the gas is further processed, the result is highly enriched uranium that can be used in a bomb.
The Bush administration sharply criticized the Iranian announcement saying Iran has “chosen the pathway of defiance” in the face of UN demands that Iran stop uranium enrichment altogether.
There was no independent verification of Iran’s announcement, but it is widely believed to be true in the nuclear community. IAEA inspectors who have been at the enrichment site in Natanz and elsewhere in Iran for the past several days will report directly to ElBaradei when he arrives in Tehran on Thursday, said IAEA officials.
The IAEA reported Iran to the Security Council in February and at the end of March the council asked ElBaradei to report back in 30 days on Iran’s compliance with demands that it cease all uranium enrichment and allow a stiffer inspection regime. With Tuesday’s announcement Iran clearly flouted the council demand that it cease enrichment activity.
Experts cautioned that the Iranian announcement is no proof that Iran has any intention of building an atomic weapon. In any case, in order to make enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, a cascade of 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges would have to be operated for at least a year.
Operating a centrifuge cascade briefly to make a few grams of low enriched uranium is much easier than keeping a delicate and far larger centrifuge cascade operating properly for weeks or months. Iran began enrichment on Monday, according to the head of Iran’s civilian Atomic Energy Organization.
Gary Samore, a nuclear non-proliferation adviser to former President Bill Clinton, noted that Iran has yet to operate a large cascade of 1,000 centrifuges or more–the type needed to make a significant quantity of enriched uranium. But Tuesday’s announcement indicated they could be well on their way.
“Iran has now passed the next hurdle: running a production module [of 164 centrifuges.] So if they feel they can do this without problems then they can start building new modules of 164 centrifuges each … and the argument is that … they could then build similar sets of cascades secretly,” Samore said.
Although Iran has said repeatedly that it does not want to make a nuclear bomb, Western diplomats are skeptical of the claims and suspect the country may be planning or already have a clandestine program in addition to the announced one at Natanz in central Iran. It is easy to hide centrifuge facilities that are relatively small and that leave little or no trace if they are located under ground, Samore said.
Signs of military work
Nuclear inspectors have found rough drawings for forming uranium into a basketball-size mass that can be fitted to a missile and indications that Iran’s Defense Ministry may be involved in some of the country’s nuclear work.
In IAEA reports, ElBaradei has said he was unable to rule out that Iran still has a hidden nuclear program.
Even the limited enrichment capability made public Tuesday widens Iran’s choices in dealing with the United Nations and the West, making it far harder for the European Union and the United States to insist on a complete cessation of all of Iran’s enrichment activities, said diplomats and experts.
“It is always easier to get a freeze than a rollback,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran analyst at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London, who used to handle non-proliferation issues for the U.S. State Department.
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How uranium is enriched
Uranium enrichment, the accomplishment announced by Iran on Tuesday, requires a high degree of technical expertise. It begins with production of a gas from raw uranium. That gas is pumped into a centrifuge, a machine that uses centrifugal force to separate particles. As the centrifuge spins, some of the heavier, more common uranium-238 isotope drops away, leaving the desired uranium-235 isotope. The gas proceeds to other centrifuges where the process is repeated, increasing the proportion of uranium-235.
Iran said its uranium was enriched enough to be usable in a nuclear power plant, meaning that the amount of uranium-235 had been raised from its typical 0.7 percent level to 3.5 percent. To use uranium for a nuclear weapon, far more enrichment would be required–to 90 percent.
Only 164 centrifuges were used in this enrichment, Iran said. But any large-scale enrichment would require tens of thousands of centrifuges.
–Tribune news services
