Analysis // by Ben frankelIran takes a major step toward bomb
Iran has publicly admitted that it has taken a major step toward building nuclear weapons: enriching uranium to 20 percent; the Brazil-Turkey-Iran deal of two months ago was supposed to address this issue: Iran would deliver to Turkey 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium and, in return, would receive sufficient amounts of uranium enriched to 20 percent to operate a small research reactor; Iran did not wait for the ink to dry on its signature on the deal before violating it
That Iran has been engaged in a long-term, disciplined, determined effort to develop the means which would allow it to build nuclear weapons is not in dispute. Iran, though, has been careful to maintain the fiction that its nuclear activities were for peaceful purposes. Iran, it appears, no longer feel the need to maintain that fiction as rigorously as it did in the past: Iran’s atomic energy chief says his country can now produce 20-percent enriched uranium on a regular basis, a step that puts Iran closer to being able to manufacture uranium at levels necessary to make an atomic bomb.
VOA News reports that Ali Akbar Salehi told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) Wednesday that Iran now has the capacity to produce five kilograms of 20 percent-enriched uranium a month. He says Iran has already produced seventeen kilograms of uranium at 20 percent purity (remnants of the fiction remain: he says Iran will only make as much as needed for a medical research reactor in the capital, Tehran).
Enriching uranium at 20 percent purity enables Iran to step up its production of fuel for its nuclear reactor, and also cut the time needed to enrich uranium to 90 percent purity — something that would be necessary for Iran to produce an atomic bomb.
The Iranian announcement also exposes the Iran-Turkey-Brazil nuclear deal for it is a sham. Back on 20 May we wrote:
Last weekend the leaders of Brazil, Turkey, and Iran reached an agreement which is similar to the one the IAEA offered Iran last October. Iran would ship to another country 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium, and in return would receive nuclear fuel for its research reactor. Without a complete and verifiable stop to Iran’s aggressive enrichment activities, especially a stop to its effort to enrich uranium to 20 percent, the IAEA proposal would have achieved, and last weekend’s deal will achieve, only one thing: merely delay the inevitable — Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons — and not even delay it by much (months, not years). To suggest otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard (Ben Frankel, “Cunning Iran wins again,” 20 May 2010 HSNW).
Iran’s announcement makes one thing clear: as long as Iran continues to operate its centrifuge farms, it could always make the decision to enrich uranium to a bomb-grade level.
The announcement comes a day after a top U.S. Treasury official said new UN sanctions, together with unilateral measures proposed by the United States, the European Union and others, are effectively cutting Iran off from the global economy. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has condemned the new sanctions against Iran, which he said were imposed by “arrogant powers.” He called the sanctions exaggerated and desperate in remarks to university professors in Tehran.
Ben Frankel is editor of Homeland Security newsWire
