Iran says 2 UN watchdog devices at nuclear site turned off

TEHRAN, IRAN >> Iran turned off two surveillance devices Wednesday used by U.N. inspectors to monitor the Islamic Republic's uranium enrichment, further escalating the crisis over its atomic program as Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers remains in tatters.

The move appeared to be a new pressure technique just before the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, meeting in Vienna, approved a resolution to criticize Iran put forward by Western nations. The censure deals with what the watchdog refers to as Iran's failure to provide “credible information” over nuclear material found at undeclared sites across the country.

But Iran's latest move, announced by state television, makes it even more difficult for inspectors to monitor Tehran's nuclear program. Nonproliferation experts have warned Iran now has enough uranium enriched close to weaponsgrade levels to pursue an atomic bomb if it chooses to do so.

The state TV report, later repeated by other Iranian media, said authorities deactivated the “beyond-safeguards cameras of the measuring Online Enrichment Monitor ... and flowmeter.” That apparently refers to the IAEA's online monitors that watch the enrichment of uranium gas through piping at enrichment facilities.

In 2016, the IAEA said it installed the device for the first time in Iran's underground Natanz nuclear facility, its main enrichment site, located some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. The device allowed for “aroundthe-clock monitoring” of the facility's cascades, a series of centrifuges hooked together to rapidly spin uranium gas to enrich it.

“Traditional methods of sampling and analysis can take three weeks or longer, mostly because of the time it takes to ship the sample from Iran to the IAEA's laboratories in Austria,” the agency said at the time.

Iran is also enriching uranium at its underground Fordo facility, though the IAEA is not known to have installed these devices there.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far had extensive cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” state TV said in its report Wednesday. “Unfortunately, the agency, without considering this cooperation ... not only did not appreciate this cooperation, but also considered it a duty of Iran.”