A Disturbing Report on Iran

The New York Times reports that inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before. In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s operations in the main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors.

Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel and were often running them empty or not at all. Now, says IAEA chief ElBaradei, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted:

We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich. From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.

To make matters worse, the forthcoming report to the Security Council is expected to say that since the Iranians stopped complying in February 2006 with an agreement on broad inspections by the agency around the country, the IAEA’s understanding of “the scope and content” of Iran’s nuclear activities has deteriorated.

The bottom-line: (1) Iran’s uranium enrichment is proceeding at a faster pace than previously thought, and (2) less is known about Iran’s nuclear efforts than previously. A bad combination, indeed.

Here’s a scenario to think about:

• It’s the fall of 2008, with our presidential election only weeks (or days) away.

• Iran has produced enough enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon.

• Iran announces that it has done so, or the IAEA, using credible sources, concludes that Iran has done so.

• Iran replaces Iraq as the foremost foreign policy issue in our election.

How would the presidential candidates react? Would American public opinion favor a hawkish or a dovish reaction?

Further details from the New York Times:

The inspection conducted on Sunday took place on two hours notice, a time period so short that it appears unlikely that the Iranians could have turned on their centrifuges to impress the inspectors. According to diplomats familiar with the inspectors’ report, in addition to 1,300 working centrifuges, another 300 were being tested and appeared ready to be fed raw nuclear fuel as soon as late this week, the diplomats said. Another 300 are under construction.

“They are at the stage where they are doing one cascade a week,” said one diplomat familiar with the analysis of Iran’s activities, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the information. A “cascade” has 164 centrifuges, and experts say that at this pace, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June — enough to make one bomb’s worth of material every year. Tehran may, the diplomat said, be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000.

The inspectors have tested the output and concluded that Iran is producing reactor-grade uranium, enriched to a little less than 5 percent purity. But that still worries American officials and experts here at the I.A.E.A. If Iran stores the uranium and later runs it through its centrifuges for another four or five months, it can raise the enrichment level to 90 percent — the level needed for a nuclear weapon.

In the arcane terminology of nuclear proliferation, that is known as a “breakout capability,” the ability to throw inspectors out of the country and then produce weapons-grade fuel, as North Korea did in 2003.

Some Bush administration officials and some nuclear experts here at the I.A.E.A. and elsewhere suspect that the Iranians may not be driving for a weapon but rather for that “breakout capability,” because that alone can serve as a nuclear deterrent. It would be a way for Iran to make clear that it could produce a bomb on short notice, without actually possessing one.

One senior European diplomat, who declined to speak for attribution, said Washington would now have to confront the question of whether it wants to keep Iran from producing any nuclear material or whether it wants to keep Tehran from gaining the ability to build a weapon on short notice.

“The key decision you have to make right now,” the diplomat said, “is that if you don’t want the breakout scenario, you would have to freeze the Iranian program at a laboratory scale. Because if you continue this stalemate, that will bring you, eventually, to a breakout capability.”