Iran starts construction work on new underground nuclear assembly plant
Satellite images show rebuilt roads, cleared site and excavation equipment at Natanz atomic hub
It may be that they’re digging some kind of structure that’s going to be out in front and that there’s going to be a tunnel into the mountains. Jeffrey Lewis
Iran has begun construction of what analysts believe is a new underground advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility, after the last one exploded in a sabotage attack.
Since August, Iran has built a new road to the south of Natanz toward a former firing range for security forces, images from Planet Labs in San Francisco show. One image shows the site cleared away, and what appears to be construction equipment. Analysts from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies believe the site is being excavated.
“That road also goes into the mountains so it may be that they’re digging some kind of structure that’s going to be out in front and that there’s going to be a tunnel into the mountains,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the institute who studies Iran’s nuclear program. “Or maybe they’re just going to bury it there.”
Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had told his inspectors about the construction. The IAEA continues to have access to Iran’s sites despite Tehran having breached many limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“They have started, but it’s not completed. It’s a long process,” Grossi said.
Iran now enriches uranium to up to 4.5 percent purity, and according to the last IAEA report had a stock
pile of 2,105kg. Experts say 1,050kg of low-enriched uranium is enough to be re-enriched up to weaponsgrade levels of 90 percent purity for one nuclear weapon.
Iran’s so-called “breakout time” — the time needed for it to build one nuclear weapon if it chose to do so — is estimated now by outside experts to have dropped from one year under the JCPOA to as little as three months.
Natanz, built underground in the central Isfahan province to protect it from air strikes, is at the center of Iran’s nuclear program. Centrifuges spin in vast halls under 7.6 meters of concrete, and air defense positions surround the facility. Despite being one of the most secure sites in Iran, Natanz was targeted by the Stuxnet computer virus — believed to be the creation of the US and Israel — before the nuclear deal.
In July, a fire and explosion struck its advanced centrifuge assembly facility in an incident Iran described as sabotage.
IAEA inspectors have been able to maintain their surveillance, which Lewis described as very important. “As long as they declared to the IAEA in the proper time frame, there’s no prohibition on putting things underground,” he said. “For me, the real red line would be if the Iranians started to stonewall the IAEA.”
For now, it remains unclear how deep Iran will put this new facility. And while the sabotage will delay Iran in assembling new centrifuges, Lewis warned the program ultimately would regroup as it had before and continue accumulating ever-more material beyond the scope of the abandoned nuclear deal.
“We buy ourselves a few months,” he said. “But what good is a few months if we don’t know what we’re going to use it for?”