VIENNA: Iran has installed half the advanced uranium-enriching machines it said earlier this month it would quickly add to its Fordow site dug into a mountain, but has not yet brought them online, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report seen by Reuters.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago it would rapidly expand its enrichment capacity at Fordow by adding eight cascades, or clusters, of IR-6 centrifuges at Fordow within three to four weeks.
On Thursday, a day before Iran’s Presidential elections, the US issued fresh sanctions against the country in response to “continued nuclear escalations.”
Iran has moved closer than ever to the ability to produce several nuclear weapons, with some members of Iran’s ruling elite for the first time dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. https://t.co/Ng92KFNVW9 pic.twitter.com/WhK1Sqzc5Z
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 28, 2024
Within two days the IAEA had verified that two of the cascades had been installed. In a confidential report to member states on Friday the agency said that number had now doubled.
“The Agency has verified that Iran has installed four of the aforementioned eight IR-6 cascades in Unit 1 at FFEP (Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant),” the report said, adding that the verification happened on Sunday.
“Iran has not specified to the Agency when it would start feeding any of the cascades in Unit 1 with UF6 or the planned enrichment level,” it added, referring to uranium hexafluoride gas, the feedstock for centrifuges.
Diplomats say the addition of the IR-6 machines was a response to a resolution against Iran by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors on June 5 calling on Tehran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors. Iran tends to bristle at such resolutions.
The United States announced new sanctions targeting Iran’s oil trade on Thursday, saying it was acting in response to “steps (by Iran) to further expand its nuclear program in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose”.
Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% of weapons grade, at two sites: Fordow and an above-ground pilot plant at Natanz. It has enough material enriched to up to 60%, if enriched further, for three nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
At Fordow, it is currently using the two only operating cascades of IR-6 centrifuges there to enrich to 60% from 20%.
Iran also informed the IAEA this month that it would bring online more of the dozens of advanced centrifuges it has installed at its largest enrichment site, the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz.
(REUTERS)
