1 of 4 | Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (C) visits the Natanz uranium enrichment facilities 200 miles (322 km) south of the Tehran, Iran on April 8, 2008. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran started installation of some 6,000 new centrifuges on Tuesday. (UPI Photo/President's official website) |
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Iran has confounded the U.S. intelligence community yet again: New revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest the Islamic Republic is far closer to being able to make its own nuclear weapons than the most recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published last year imagined.
A new report from the IAEA, based in the Austrian capital, Vienna, said Iran's production of enriched uranium had been underestimated and Tehran has enough material for a nuclear weapon.
The report said Iran has now produced 1,010 kilograms of low-enriched uranium -- almost a ton. And more is certainly on the way. The IAEA said Iran now has 4,000 centrifuges operating to separate nuclear-usable uranium-235 from uranium-238, an increase in 200 centrifuges in only two months. And another 1,600 centrifuges are being constructed.
The IAEA inspectors also found Iran had produced 460 pounds more LEU within the overall total than was previously thought. "It's worse than we thought," Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, told The New York Times. "It's alarming that the actual production was underreported by a third."
IAEA officials say Iran is still some ways from a bomb. It would have to make changes to produce highly enriched uranium rather than the approximate ton of low-enriched uranium it has, and such a step would be apparent -- unless Tehran hid the uranium.
The IAEA's report will be an unpleasant embarrassment to the Obama administration, especially as it comes right after Israeli President Shimon Peres asked former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form the next Israeli government. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the fast-rising Yisrael Beiteinu Party, now the third-largest in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, following the Feb. 10 general election, also has said he favors making Netanyahu prime minister. Both Netanyahu and Lieberman have said Israel cannot afford to wait while Iran perfects the nuclear weapons and intermediate-range ballistic missile systems to carry them that could blast the Jewish state off the map.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have far preferred to deal with an Israeli government led by current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that would heed their calls for restraint against Iran. But that isn't going to happen.
Netanyahu has six weeks to form a government in Israel, and his prospects of succeeding appear very good. Then he will face the reality that Iran's nuclear and missile development programs have either reached, or are very close to reaching, the point where they could realistically deliver a nuclear weapon to Israel. Israel is even more vulnerable to other nations in such an attack because two-thirds of its population is concentrated in a densely populated strip only 60 miles long and 15 miles wide along the Mediterranean coast.
Obama and Clinton wanted time to develop a diplomatic dialogue with Iran. But the rapid advances in Tehran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs have deprived the new U.S. leaders of that time.
The new Washington policymakers will be critically and carefully watched not only by Israeli leaders but also by Arab ones. Moderate Arab leaders have been alarmed by Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons, but if they feel the U.S. government is appeasing Iran, or is ineffectual in stopping its drive to develop nuclear weapons, they may feel forced to cut their own deals with Tehran.
The revelation is also highly embarrassing for the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General Mohammed ElBaradei. They inspect the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz only once a year. Therefore, even though IAEA officials insist Iran is not secretly smuggling low-enriched uranium out of the complex to process in its massive and rapidly growing system of centrifuges to make weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, there in fact is no way they can truly know.
The IAEA's report, therefore, is a devastating blow to the credibility of doves on the Iran nuclear issue in the United States and Israel. And it will be as alarming to Arab mainstream leaders as it is to Israeli ones.
