Advanced Centrifuges Operating, Iranian Official Confirms

Iran confirmed yesterday that it has begun using a next-generation centrifuge model capable of enriching uranium more than twice as fast as its predecessor, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 22).

Diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation of Iran’s nuclear activities said earlier this month that Tehran was enriching small amounts of uranium hexafluoride gas using 10 of its new IR-2 centrifuges.

Iran has been suspected of pursuing its enrichment program to develop nuclear weapons, but officials in Tehran insist the nation’s nuclear program is intended solely for civilian energy production.  A recent U.S. intelligence estimate indicated that Iran halted nuclear weapon development in 2003 but maintains uranium enrichment activities that could aid a military program.

“We are (now) running a new generation of centrifuges,” Iranian state media quoted Javad Vaidi, deputy head of Iran’s supreme national security council, as saying yesterday.

Iran must install additional centrifuges to enrich uranium at the rate needed for a nuclear energy or weapons program, AP said (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press I/Denver Post, Feb. 24).

IAEA officials said Friday that they had shown Iran intelligence from the United States and other countries suggesting that Tehran had worked with technology to develop a nuclear weapon, the New York Times reported.

On Feb. 15, Washington agreed to supply the U.N. nuclear watchdog with evidence suggesting Tehran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.  Since 2005, the United States and other nations had refused to surrender the evidence, obtained from a laptop computer purportedly acquired from an Iranian nuclear technician.

Among the most significant documents in the collection was the schematic layout of the internal components of what appears to be a warhead.  “This layout has been assessed by the agency as quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device,” the agency says in its report on the Iran nuclear probe.  It added that the proof is not absolute explosives and Iran insists its missile program uses “conventional warheads only.”

The agency has not concluded whether the documents signify that Iran had once operated a nuclear weapons program, a top IAEA official told reporters Friday. (David Sanger, New York Times, Feb. 22).

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna, said the U.S. information was largely fake and was provided to the agency too late to be vetted properly.  U.S. officials rebuffed the Iranian statement, saying that Tehran could have disclosed the information from its nuclear file years ago (Karimi, AP, Feb. 24).

The Bush administration continued its push for a new round of sanctions against Iran following the release Friday of the IAEA report, the Washington Post reported.

The report contained a “number of things that were quite disturbing,” said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, referring to Iran's refusal to confirm U.S. claims that it had operated a nuclear weapons program in the past.  “They did not own up to it.”

“Yes, they have answered some questions and made some progress on some issues," he said.  “But those are not the most central issues, and on the most central issues of the past, there is no progress.  In fact, things are getting worse.”

Iran “is clearly making all kinds of statements that suggest that it's not going to deal with the will of the international community," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  “It hasn't answered questions about past activities in covert programs that they say they didn't have.”

State Department officials urged U.N. Security Council members to pass a third sanctions resolution against Iran.  The agency expects to lead talks today between the council’s five permanent members and Germany (Warrick/Wright, Washington Post, Feb. 23).

Khalilzad said in an interview published by a French newspaper today that the United States has little time stop Iran’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.

“From a certain point of view, time is not working in our favor — the Iranians are now planning to develop a new, more efficient generation of centrifuges and if they master that technology to produce fissile material they will have access to better enriched uranium,” he told Le Figaro.

“Given that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in violation of its obligations under the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty, given the regime's policy, its rhetoric, its association with certain groups … it would be too risky to let it acquire the capacity to obtain nuclear weapons,” he said (Reuters, Feb. 25).

Vaidi warned yesterday that imposing new sanctions on Iran would carry international consequences, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Some Western countries want to follow the wrong path and we suggest they take heed from their past experiences,” the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying.  “Choosing the wrong path and adopting a new resolution will have a cost for those countries.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said that new sanctions would only create “slight problems” for Iran (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Feb. 23).

In Washington, the U.S. Treasury Department is building a case that Iran’s Central Bank is providing assistance to other Iranian financial institutions in avoiding U.S. sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The bank is the lynchpin of Iran’s financial system and the country’s primary remaining connection to international financial networks, the Journal said.

The United States would have to present a strong case to its allies to convince them to participate in penalties.  The effect of possible U.S. sanctions against the bank would rely largely on how many other nations participate in efforts to isolate the institution.

If a coalition of countries agrees to take action against the bank, it could encourage the Security Council to step up its own punitive measures against Iran over its disputed nuclear activities (Glenn Simpson, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 25).

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