Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- Iran said it plans to begin uranium enrichment operations at its recently disclosed Qum facility in 2011, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said today in a report to the agency's 35-nation governing board (see GSN, Nov. 13).

Construction of the facility began as part of an effort to establish "contingency centers for various organizations and activities," Tehran stated in an Oct. 28 letter to the agency. The site was not specifically assigned to carry out uranium enrichment activities until "the second half of 2007," as a measure aimed at ensuring the nation's continued ability to produce material if another country attacked Iran's primary enrichment facility at Natanz, the report quotes the letter as saying.

Iran has insisted its uranium enrichment program has strictly civilian aims, but Washington, Jerusalem, and several European governments have expressed concern that the program could generate nuclear-weapon material.

"Iran's failure to notify the agency of the new facility until September 2009 was inconsistent with its obligations," the report says.

U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors visited the Qum facility late last month and confirmed it "was being built to contain 16 cascades with a total of approximately 3,000 centrifuges," the report sates. Iran informed the agency it plans to install only basic IR-1 enrichment centrifuges at the site, but that it reserves the option to reconfigure the facility to host higher-speed machines.

In addition, "the agency confirmed that the plant corresponded with the design information provided by Iran and that the facility was at an advanced stage of construction, although no centrifuges had been introduced into the facility," the report states.

Nonetheless, the agency said that questions remain "about about the purpose for which the facility had been intended and how it fit into Iran’s nuclear program."

One source from a Western nation has told the Associated Press that the size of the Qum facility indicates that it is intended for military use.

A high-level international official said that the plant could be used to produce roughly 1 ton of enriched uranium each year, AP reported today.

The report states that "Iran’s declaration of the new facility reduces the level of confidence in the absence of other nuclear facilities under construction and gives rise to questions about whether there were any other nuclear facilities in Iran which had not been declared to the agency.

"Iran stated that it did not have any other nuclear facilities that were currently under construction

or in operation that had not yet been declared to the agency. Iran also stated that any such future

facilities would 'be reported to the agency according to Iran’s obligations to the agency,'" the report says.

ElBaradei insisted in the report that Iran remains obligated to time its disclosure of planned nuclear facilities in accordance with a revised version of its safeguards agreement, even though Tehran has forsworn the updated pact's requirements since agreeing to them in 2003.

At its Natanz facility, Iran estimated it had placed 10,395 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride in its operational centrifuges between Nov. 18, 2008, and Oct. 30 of this year, yielding 924 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. The agency plans to verify Iran's uranium inventory in an audit from Nov. 22 to Nov. 30.

Iran has appeared to balk at an IAEA plan for further refining of its low-enriched uranium in Russia and France. Washington and other governments had hoped the move would delay Tehran's ability to produce weapon-grade uranium from the material, allowing more time for diplomacy on the nuclear standoff.

The agency reaffirmed its call for Iran to implement the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement, which would allow for more intrusive inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, and to provide various documents that could shed light on suspicions that the nation has carried out nuclear-weapon activities in the past.

The IAEA Board of Governors is scheduled to meet next week.