Iran appears to have moved quickly to prevent a large increase in its most disputed nuclear stockpile, a new UN watchdog report indicates, in what may be an attempt not to undermine talks on a nuclear deal with six world powers next week.
The Islamic Republic’s holding of uranium gas refined to a fissile concentration of 20 per cent is closely watched by the West as it represents a relatively short technical step away from the level required for the core of an atomic bomb.
Israel, which has long warned it could use force to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, has said its foe must not obtain enough of this higher-grade uranium for one warhead if processed further. Iran says its work is peaceful and that it is Israel’s assumed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace.
The powers, which are due to resume negotiations with Iran in Geneva on November 20 on a preliminary deal towards ending the decade-old standoff over its nuclear programme, want Tehran to stop 20 per cent enrichment and neutralise the stockpile.
Iran has over the past year in effect kept the amount of its 20 per cent reserve well below Israel’s so-called “red line” by converting a large part of the uranium gas into oxide to make fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran.
“Iran does not want to provoke Israel to attack Iran. Especially now,” said nuclear expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.
But conversion work was halted between August 20 and November 5, in part for maintenance reasons, according to the quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
As Iran continued its production of 20 per cent uranium gas, the stockpile would probably have grown steadily during much of the August-November period, perhaps to significantly above 200 kg, analysts and diplomats said.
The IAEA data suggests, however, that Iran moved fast once it resumed conversion early this month, leading to a more modest rise to 196 kg in the November 14 report, up by about 10 kg since the previous one issued in late August.
Tehran may have done so by attaching a full cylinder of uranium gas to the conversion process, thereby reducing the stockpile, one nuclear expert said.
“There are rumours it got quite high – though not over the ‘red line’,” one Western diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said. “I think the decision to blend down is politically driven.”
Iran faced a “delicate balancing act,” the envoy said: if it stops refining to 20 per cent it gives in to the powers’ demand for nothing. But if it fails to convert enough it risks provoking Israel and sends the wrong message to the West.