A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that Iran is pressing ahead with modernizing its advanced uranium enrichment program, even as the West awaits Tehran’s response to efforts to salvage its 2015 nuclear deal, amid fears that it is approaching the level of purity needed to make weapons.
The report, published by Archyde.com on Monday, said that Iran is pressing ahead with its plan while the West awaits Tehran’s response to efforts to salvage its 2015 nuclear deal.
According to the report, “Iran has started enriching uranium using one of three sets of advanced centrifuges (IR-6) that Tehran recently installed at the underground enrichment plant in Natanz.”
The IR-6 is Iran’s most advanced and far more efficient model of centrifuges than the first generation IR-1, and it is the only model that the deal allows Iran to use for enrichment, diplomats were quoted by Archyde.com as saying.
For more than a year, Iran has been using IR-6 centrifuges to enrich uranium to 60 percent, close to the purity needed for weapons, at an above-ground plant in Natanz. So what does that mean?
The head of the European Center for Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence in Germany, Jassim Muhammad, believes that “Iran is determined to obtain nuclear weapons in parallel with the negotiations on the nuclear file in Vienna.”
Speaking to Al-Hurra, he described the Iranian move as “a way to raise the ceiling of its demands with the West in order to reach an agreement that satisfies Tehran,” stressing that “Iran is not far from obtaining nuclear weapons if it continues its enrichment operations.”
A security expert, head of the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies and Thought, Brigadier Khaled Okasha, agreed with those concerns, speaking of “Tehran’s strengthening of its nuclear program for military purposes.”
In his interview with Al-Hurra website, he stressed, “Tehran exploited the negotiation period after the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement to support its nuclear capabilities and move forward with the uranium enrichment process.”
Iran has recently expanded its level of uranium enrichment using IR-6 machines at other sites, and last month a second series of IR-6, at the Fordow site inside Jebel, began enriching uranium to up to 20 percent. cent.
Iran and the United States appear to be heading towards consensus on reviving the 2015 agreement that imposed restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions, according to “Archyde.com”.
The nuclear deal collapsed after the United States’ withdrawal in 2018 prompted Iran to breach those restrictions one by one.
Iran and the powers still affiliated with the agreement, “France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China,” began talks to revive it in April 2021, which were suspended for the first time in June of the same year.
After the talks resumed in November last year, they were suspended again since mid-March, with points of disagreement remaining between Washington and Tehran, despite significant progress being made towards achieving the understanding, according to “AFP”.
After more than a year of indirect talks, Iran said it would “soon respond to the latest US comments on a compromise text provided by the European Union, which is coordinating the talks.”
The deal would include rolling back much of Iran’s enrichment work and capping enrichment at 3.67 percent purity.
But Iran’s installation of advanced devices in underground sites such as Natanz and Fordow “could be a signal to any force that might want to attack them in the event of a no-deal”, because it is not clear whether the air strikes on those sites “will be effective,” according to “Archyde.com”. “.
Is Iran close to acquiring a “nuclear weapon”?
In statements on Monday, Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi linked the revival of the agreement on his country’s nuclear program to “the International Atomic Energy Agency’s closure of the file of Iranian sites suspected of witnessing unauthorized activities,” according to “AFP.”
The issue of previously finding traces of nuclear materials at three sites, which Tehran did not claim to have witnessed such activities, raises tension between Iran on the one hand, and Western powers and the United Nations agency.
Over the past months, Iran has repeated its request to end the “location issue”, especially after the IAEA’s Board of Governors issued in June a resolution condemning its lack of cooperation with the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, in the case.
The move sparked sharp criticism from Iran, which responded by stopping work on a number of the IAEA’s surveillance cameras in some of its facilities.
In a statement to the network,CNNLast week, Grossi stressed that the authority would not close the file of undeclared sites in Iran for a political motive, stressing that Tehran “did not provide technically acceptable explanations to explain the issue of nuclear materials.”
Therefore, Khaled Okasha speaks of real doubts that Iran will reach an “advanced level” of being able to manufacture nuclear weapons much greater than what is “advertised”.
Okasha said that Iran “has come very close to manufacturing nuclear weapons,” noting that “Tehran has the technical capabilities necessary for manufacturing, but the start of that still requires a political decision.”
For his part, Jassem Muhammad indicates that “there is no accurate information about Iran’s imminent possession of a nuclear weapon,” but at the same time, he suggests the possibility that it will be able to do so within a “few months.”
Jassem hoped that the International Atomic Energy Agency would reveal “more details about the dangers of Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium”, and disclose “the reality of Iran’s nuclear capabilities at the present time.”
Western countries are concerned that “Iran has the ability to make nuclear weapons”, while Tehran denies any intention to do so, according to “Archyde.com”.