Iran signals a major boost in nuclear enrichment at a key location

Iran also announced plans to expand production at its main enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. Both measures are sure to escalate tensions with Western governments and fuel fears that Tehran is fast becoming a nuclear power capable of quickly making nuclear bombs if its leaders decide to do so.

In Fordow alone, the expansion could allow Iran to amass several bombs’ worth of nuclear fuel every month, a technical analysis provided to The Washington Post shows. Although it is the smaller of Iran’s two uranium enrichment facilities, Fordow is considered particularly important because its underground location makes it virtually invulnerable to air strikes.

It is also symbolically important because Fordow had stopped making enriched uranium entirely under the terms of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Iran resumed production of the nuclear fuel there shortly after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from the agreement.

Iran already has a stockpile of about 300 pounds of highly enriched uranium, which could be further refined into U.S. intelligence officials say fuel for nuclear weapons will be available within weeks or perhaps days. Iran is also believed to have amassed most of the technical knowledge for a simple nuclear device, although it would likely take another two years to build a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, according to intelligence officials and weapons experts.

Iran says it has no plans to make nuclear weapons. But in a striking shift, leaders of the country’s nuclear energy program have begun publicly claiming that their scientists now have all the components and skills for nuclear bombs and could quickly build one if ordered. Over the past two years, Fordow has begun stockpiling a type of highly enriched uranium that is close to weapons grade, with a purity far higher than the low-enriched fuel commonly used in nuclear power plants.

While Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has grown steadily since 2018, the planned expansion, if fully completed, would represent a leap forward in Iran’s capacity to produce the fissile fuel used in both nuclear power plants and – with additional refining – nuclear weapons .

In private messages to the IAEA early last week, Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency said Fordow would be equipped with nearly 1,400 new centrifuges, machines used to make enriched uranium, according to two European diplomats briefed on the reports. The new equipment, made in Iran and connected in eight assemblies known as cascades, would be installed within four weeks. Reuters initially reported a leaked draft of the Iranian plan.

The Biden administration responded with a warning about Iran’s planned expansion.

“Iran seeks to further expand its nuclear program in ways that do not serve a credible peaceful purpose,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Thursday. “These planned actions further undermine Iran’s claims to the contrary. If Iran implements these plans, we will respond accordingly.”

Although the IAEA was aware of Iran’s plans to increase production of enriched uranium, the size of the planned boost surprised many analysts. If fully implemented, the expansion at Fordow would double the number of operating centrifuges in the underground facility, within a compressed timeline of approximately one month. A proportionately smaller, but still substantial increase is on track for Natanz.

Iran’s expansion plan also calls for installing equipment that is far more capable than the machines that now produce most of Iran’s enriched uranium, according to diplomats with access to confidential IAEA documents. Only newer machines known as IR-6s would be installed at Fordow, reports indicate, a significant upgrade over the IR-1 centrifuges currently in use there.

The 1,400 advanced machines would increase Fordow’s capacity by 360 percent, according to a technical analysis provided to The Post by David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Within a month of becoming fully operational, Fordow’s IR-6s could generate about 320 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, Albright said. With conservative calculations, that is enough for five nuclear bombs. Within two months, the total inventory could reach nearly 500 pounds, Albright added.

“Iran would gain the ability to break out quickly, in a deeply hidden facility, a capability it has never had before,” Albright wrote in an email.

Iran’s expansion plans for the Natanz plant call for the addition of thousands of centrifuge machines of a different type, known as the IR-2M. Albright calculated that Natanz’s total production capacity would increase by 35 percent.

Since the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran has limited the ability of IAEA inspectors to monitor the country’s production of advanced centrifuges. But agency inspectors saw technicians begin installing the IR-6 machines during their visit to Fordow last Tuesday, according to a confidential summary shared with IAEA member states.

“It’s completely credible,” Albright said of Iran’s expansion plans. ‘We have no idea what they did with centrifuges. We won’t fully know their capabilities until they install the machines.”

Iran chose to make its plans public after IAEA member states approved a formal reprimand on June 5 criticizing Iran for its nuclear resistance. The IAEA Board of Governors resolution cited Iran’s “continued failure to provide necessary, full and unambiguous cooperation” with the IAEA monitoring teams. Iranian officials immediately fired back, with an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowing in a social media post that Tehran “will not bow to pressure.”

A spokesman for Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said Tehran had strictly followed rules for notifying the nuclear watchdog of its plans. The spokesperson confirmed that the decision to do so was directly related to the June 5 disapproval by IAEA member states.

“In this case, in response to the unnecessary, ill-advised and hasty resolution of the Governing Council, Iran has officially communicated its decision to the IAEA,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Although the 2015 nuclear deal is technically still in force, Iran has systematically ignored each of its key provisions in the years since the Trump administration abandoned the deal. The agreement was brokered during Barack Obama’s presidency by the United States and five other world powers, plus the European Union, and is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The agreement was condemned by the Israeli government and panned by many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, for its perceived shortcomings – most notably its “sunset” provisions that allowed several key restrictions to expire in 2031, just 15 years after the pact entered into force. in force. Yet until 2018, Iran was believed to be largely in compliance with the deal, which sharply limited its ability to make or store enriched uranium in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran has shown little interest in reviving or improving the deal since 2018. The Biden White House, after a flurry of activity to resume negotiations the administration’s first months have largely abandoned the project, focusing instead on a strategy of military strikes on Iranian-backed militias, combined with quiet diplomacy aimed at deterring Iran from crossing nuclear red lines.

Despite its increasingly provocative behavior, Iran appears unwilling to risk a US or Israeli military attack by actually building and testing a nuclear weapon, US analysts say.

“We see no indication that Iran is currently undertaking the major activities that would be necessary to produce a testable nuclear device. And we do not believe that the Supreme Leader has yet made a decision to resume the armaments program that we believe Iran suspended or halted in late 2003,” said a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and under rules established by the UN have been determined. the board to discuss the matter. “That said, we remain deeply concerned about Iran’s nuclear activities and will continue to monitor them closely.”

Tehran’s attempts to portray itself as a threshold-level nuclear power give Iran a degree of ambiguity that suits Tehran’s goals, said Robert Litwak, author of several books on Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation and senior vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington think tank.

“Iran’s nuclear program is both a deterrent and a bargaining chip,” Litwak said. While the planned expansion is evidence of “pushing the boundaries,” such moves simultaneously strengthen Tehran’s hand should the regime decide that a return to the negotiating table serves its interests, he said.

“Iran’s nuclear intentions must be viewed through the prism of regime survival,” Litwak said. For now, at least, Iran is not facing an existential threat that would force the regime to cross the line into overt armament.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.