DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A mysterious explosion and chimney in Iran’s major nuclear facilities would possibly have prevented Tehran from building complex centrifuges, but that has not stopped the Islamic Republic through the expansion of its low-enriched uranium reserves. .
Limiting that stockpile represented one of the main tenets of the nuclear deal that world powers reached with Iran five years ago this week — an accord which now lies in tatters after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from it two years ago.
The larger that stockpile grows, the shorter the so-called “breakout time” becomes — time that Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so. And while Tehran insists its atomic program is for peaceful purposes, it has renewed threats to withdraw from a key nonproliferation treaty as the U.S. tries to extend a U.N. arms embargo on Iran due to expire in October.
All of this increases additional confrontations in the coming months.
Iranian officials likely recognized that as they realized the scope of the July 2 blast at the Natanz compound in Iran’s central Isfahan province. They initially downplayed the fire, describing the site as a “shed” even as analysts immediately told The Associated Press that the blast struck Natanz’s new advanced centrifuge assembly facility.
Days later, Iran acknowledged the fire struck that facility and raised the possibility of sabotage at the site, which was earlier targeted by the Stuxnet computer virus. Still, it has been careful not to directly blame the U.S. or Israel, whose officials heavily hinted they had a hand in the fire. A claim of responsibility for the attack only raised suspicions of a foreign influence in the blast.
A direct accusation by Tehran would increase the pressure on Iran’s Shiite theocracy to respond, something it apparently does not want to do yet.
The explosion and fire, however, did not affect Natanz’s underground centrifugation rooms. It’s where thousands of first-generation fuel centrifuges still rotate, enriching uranium up to 4.5% purity. Meanwhile, 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 “escape time” that Iran would like 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 suspicions of Israeli sabotage and continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, will create general tension with Iran and introduce new uncertainty into the calculations of Iranian leaders,” the Eurasia organization warned in an investigation Tuesday. . “This can cause Iran to take riskier action in the nuclear field or retaliate for the recovery of Array … Iraq or the region.”
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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.