And Israel and Iran have been engaged in a high-stakes shadow war across the wider Middle East since the nuclear deal’s collapse. Already, Israel’s recently reinstalled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened military actions against Tehran. officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.Īny explanation from Iran, however, likely won’t be enough to satisfy Israel, Iran’s regional archrival.
It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead U.S. “But the other two legs of the stool, meaning enrichment programs, they’ve obviously advanced very far.”īut Fordo, which sits under a mountain near the holy Shiite city of Qom, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tehran, remains a special concern for the international community. “To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003,” CIA Director Williams Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. intelligence community, as recently as this past weekend, has maintained its assessment that Iran isn’t pursuing an atomic bomb. While the IAEA’s director-general has warned Iran now has enough uranium to produce “several” nuclear bombs if it chooses, it likely would take months more to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile. Uranium at 84 percent is nearly at weapons-grade levels of 90 percent - meaning any stockpile of that material could be quickly used to produce an atomic bomb if Iran chooses. READ MORE: Negotiations to revive Iran nuclear deal on ‘pause’ after Russia demands sanctions relief Any accusation of enrichment higher than that further ratchets up tension over the program. Iran has been producing uranium enriched to 60 percent purity - a level for which nonproliferation experts already say Tehran has no civilian use.
Stockpile reports series#
The U.S.’ unilateral withdrawal from the accord in 2018 set in motion a series of attacks and escalations by Tehran over its program.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal limited Tehran’s uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent - enough to fuel a nuclear power plant. However, experts say such a great variance in the purity even at the atomic level would appear suspicious to inspectors. Iranian officials could not be immediately reached for comment regarding the report, details of which had been circulating for about a week.Ī spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, Behrouz Kamalvandi, sought last week to portray any detection of uranium particles enriched to that level as a momentary side effect of trying to reach a finished product of 60 percent purity. “Discussions between the agency and Iran to clarify the matter are ongoing.” “Iran informed the agency that ‘unintended fluctuations’ in enrichment levels may have occurred during the transition period,” the IAEA report said. The IAEA took samples the following day, which showed particles up to 83.7 percent purity, the report said. 21 that the two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges in Fordo had been configured in a way “substantially different” to what had been previously declared. The IAEA report described inspectors discovering on Jan. The IAEA report, which only speaks about “particles,” suggests that Iran isn’t building a stockpile of uranium enriched above 60 percent - the level it has been enriching at for some time. WATCH: State Department holds briefing as reports suggest Iran increased its uranium stockpile The confidential quarterly report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency distributed to member states likely will renew tensions between Iran and the West over its program. VIENNA (AP) - Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog found uranium particles enriched up to 83.7 percent in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site, a report seen Tuesday by The Associated Press said.
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