Nuke fuel now sufficient to make bomb
WASHINGTON: Iran’s growing stockpile of nuclear fuel recently crossed a critical threshold, according to a report issued on Tuesday by international inspectors.
For the first time since US President Donald Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran appears to have enough enriched uranium to produce a single nuclear weapon, though it would take months or years to manufacture a warhead and deliver it over long distances.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear capabilities and reports to the United Nations, also documented for the first time how Iran’s leadership blocked its inspectors from visiting three critical sites where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.
The agency’s newly appointed director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, an Argentine diplomat who has spent most of his life working on nuclear issues, said it was urgent for “Iran immediately to cooperate fully with the agency” by allowing it access to the sites, and to answer additional questions “related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclearrelated activities”.
In response, Iran said it rejected the agency’s new rounds of questions because it had been cleared of responsibility to answer for its nuclear past. Iran, the report quoted Tehran as saying, “will not recognise any allegation on past activities and does not consider itself obliged to respond to such allegations”.
“The situation is a paradox,” Mr Grossi said in a recent interview in Washington, his first since taking over at the IAEA. “What we’re verifying is the gradual diminishing compliance with the agreement we’re supposed to be verifying.”
So far, experts note, the evidence suggests that Iran’s actions are incremental and calculated to pressure European governments and the Trump administration, rather than rushing for a bomb.
In 2016, Iran shipped out of the country 97% of its stockpile of uranium fuel, enough to make more than 14 weapons. It stayed well below the one-bomb threshold through most of 2019, confining itself to a stockpile of 300 kilogrammes.
But now, in its effort to pressure Europe to undermine the US economic sanctions, Iran is back in the fuel-making business.
Latest figures, contained in a report to the agency’s 171 member states, show that for the first time since the nuclear accord went into effect, the country has surpassed 1,000kg of uranium fuel enriched up to 4.5%. If further enriched to 90%, that will be enough to produce a single nuclear weapon.