DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: A mysterious explosion and a chimney in Iran’s major nuclear facilities would possibly have prevented Tehran from building complex centrifuges, but that has not stopped the Islamic Republic from developing its low-enriched uranium reserves.
Limiting that reserve is one of the main principles of the nuclear deal that world powers reached Iran five years ago this week, a deal that is now in ruins after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States two years ago.
As this inventory grows, the so-called “break time” becomes the time Iran would want to build a nuclear weapon if it so decides. And while Tehran insists that its atomic agenda is for non-violent purposes, it has renewed threats to withdraw from a key non-proliferation treaty as the United States attempts to expand a United Nations arms embargo against Iran that expires in October.
All of this increases additional confrontations in the coming months.
Iranian authorities probably identified this by learning the magnitude of the July 2 explosion at the Natanz compound in Iran’s central Isfahan province. First, they minimized the fire and described the site as a “hangar,” even when analysts promptly told The Associated Press that the explosion had affected Natanz’s new complex centrifuge meeting facilities.
A few days later, Iran declared that the chimney had hit the facility and posed the option of sabotage at the site, which in the past was attacked by the PC Stuxnet virus. However, he was careful not to directly blame the United States or Israel, whose officials strongly advised that they should have participated in the chimney. A claim of duty for the attack only aroused suspicions of foreign influence in the explosion.
A direct accusation from Tehran would increase pressure on the Iranian Shiite theocracy to respond, which it does not yet need to do.
However, the explosion and chimney did not hit Natanz’s underground centrifugation rooms. This is where thousands of first-generation fuel centrifuges still rotate, enriching uranium up to 4.5% purity. At the same time, enrichment also resumed at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran, built at the back of a mountain to protect it from imaginable airstrikes. Iran also continues to experiment with complex centrifuges built in the past.
The explosion “in Natanz was mostly a blow to Iran’s plans to move to more complex stages of its nuclear project,” wrote Sima Shine, Iran’s program director at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, which in the past worked in the country’s Mossad intelligence service.
Shine warned: “However, this will not save it from Iran’s collection of enriched uranium, which has been ongoing since Iran began slowly violating the nuclear deal.”
In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had more than 1,500 kilograms (3, three hundred pounds) of low-enriched uranium. The 2015 deal limited Iran to only three hundred kilograms (661 pounds) of enriched uranium to just 3.67%, well below the military’s quality grades of 90%.
Now, at 1,500 kilograms, Iran has enough curtains for a single nuclear weapon if it makes the decision to pursue it. However, this inventory remains much smaller than in the days leading up to the 2015 agreement, when Tehran had enough for more than a dozen bombs and decided not to militarize its inventory stack.
Iran would also want to further enrich this uranium, which would attract the attention of foreign inspectors who still have access to their atomic facilities. And we’d still have to build a bomb. But the “exit time” that Iran would want to assemble a weapon, estimated at least one year under the 2015 agreement, has been reduced.
All of this comes after a series of incidents last year resulted in a U.S. drone strike that killed a high-ranking Iranian general in Baghdad in January, followed by an Iranian ballistic missile strike in retaliation by U.S. troops in Iraq. These tensions persist to this day, as the coronavirus pandemic envelops the United States and Iran.
Iran has already expressed its willingness to use its nuclear program as a lever, as the prolonged UN arms embargo against Tehran expires in October. The ban has banned major foreign weapons systems, such as fighter jets and tanks, from Iran since 2010.
Iran has threatened to expel IAEA inspectors and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty amid the U.S. lobbying campaign. North Korea, now possessing nuclear weapons, is the country that once withdrew from the treaty.
Expelling IAEA inspectors and shutting down their cameras at Iranian nuclear facilities would prevent them from seeing if Iran is driving its uranium enrichment closer to army quality levels. But it can also see Iran alienate China and Russia, which has suggested that all parties remain in the nuclear deal.
The U.S. hopes to widen the embargo, calling Iran’s threats to renew it as a “mafia tactic.” But Washington has issued its own threats, saying it can invoke the “recoil” of all UN sanctions against Iran that have eased under the nuclear deal unless the embargo continues, despite abandoning the atomic agreement.
As Trump campaigns toward the November election, he would arguably be more willing to take on the dangers of the tension that has kept his 2016 election promise to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and take a tougher line in Tehran.
The Islamic Republic, in turn, will also be more willing to take risks.
“The U.S. diplomatic campaign, as well as suspected Israeli sabotage and continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, will raise overall tension with Iran and introduce new uncertainty into the calculations of the Iranian leadership,” the Eurasia Group warned in an analysis on Tuesday. “That could induce Iran to take more risky action in the nuclear realm, or retaliate for … snapback in Iraq or the region.”
REDACTION NOTE – Jon Gambrell, Director of Gulf and Iran News for the Associated Press, has reported on Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and elsewhere in the world since joining the AP in 2006. Follow him on Twitter at www.Arraytwitter.com/ jongambrellap.
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