UN watchdog says Iran is breaking its own enriched uranium targets

Iran is making enriched uranium faster than its domestic legislation allows, according to a report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

Tehran began enriching uranium to 20 per cent fissile purity last month.

Legislation required at least 120kg of refined uranium be produced each year, which amounts to 10kg a month.

However, a senior diplomat said Iran was exceeding its own targets. “They are producing 15 kilograms a month of uranium enriched to 20 per cent. That is their production rate,” the source said.

A second diplomat said Iran was “slightly above” the target of 10kg a month.

As part of a recent acceleration of breaches of its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, Iran has begun refining uranium to 20 per cent at its Fordow plant.

This site was built secretly inside a mountain, about 130 kilometres south of Tehran, although the deal says Iran must not enrich uranium at all inside the facilities.

Until last month, Iran had not enriched uranium beyond 4.5 per cent purity. This was above the 2015 deal’s limit of 3.67 per cent but still far below the 20 per cent Iran achieved before the agreement or the 90 per cent it needs to make nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, the US again urged Iran to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington would be in close consultation with the UN nuclear watchdog to discuss appropriate action.

The agency and Iran announced on Sunday that although Tehran would go ahead with reducing co-operation with the IAEA this week, including ending snap inspections, they struck a deal on continuing “necessary” agency monitoring and verification in the country.

Details of the agreement remain confidential but the agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, described a black box-type system in which data is collected without the body being able to access it immediately.

“This is a system that allows us to continue to monitor and to register all the key activities that are taking place throughout this period so that at the end of it, we can recover all this information,” Mr Grossi said.

A senior diplomat later said this system did not apply to the core monitoring of Iran’s most important known plants, such its enrichment sites, which predate the 2015 nuclear deal.

But it would apply to measures added under the deal, such as devices that measure enriched uranium in real time.

“On the declared facilities, the reduction [in access] is practically negligible,” the senior diplomat said.

Mr Grossi said he hopes a deal can be struck at a higher level while his technical accord is in place, in an apparent reference to efforts to salvage the 2015 deal by ending Iranian breaches and bringing the US back on board.

“Some say at the end of it, if Iran wants and there is no agreement, they will destroy this information,” he said.

“Yes, but if at the end of it there is no agreement, everything is destroyed. There is no confidence any more.”

Mr Grossi said that without his weekend deal, “the situation would not, I repeat, would not be reversible or recoverable”.

“We would be basically flying blind, without any idea of what would be taking place in terms of enrichment activities and other relevant activities.”

A quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear activities by the IAEA on Tuesday said that as of February 16, Iran had produced 17.6kg of uranium enriched up to 20 per cent, with the next level down being enriched between 2 and 5 per cent.

Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium grew by 524.9kg to 2,967.8kg during the quarter, far above the 2015 deal’s 202.8kg stockpile limit, although still a fraction of the more than 8 tonnes Iran had before the deal.

As part of recent breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran began refining uranium to 20 per cent