'Iran has problems with nuclear program'

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- There has been a flurry of reports on Iran's contentious nuclear program that collectively suggest Tehran is having serious problems getting its hands on materials for its key uranium-enrichment centrifuges along with other issues.

This may persuade Israel's hawkish prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, not to embark on threatened military action against the Islamic Republic to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons.

Senior figures linked to Israel's security establishment fear that this is Netanyahu's intention. Some have even gone public, breaking a long-held taboo, with concerns that the country will be plunged into a regional war with potentially catastrophic consequences for the Jewish state.

U.S. and other officials say economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations in June 2010 have hit the nuclear program hard.

Four years ago, Iranian officials boasted that a new model of centrifuges, a key component of the enrichment program, more advanced than the P1 technology provided by Pakistan's A.Q. Khan smuggling network, was about to be introduced.

But a report by the Institute for Science and International Security of Washington a few weeks ago concluded that the new fast-spinning centrifuges aren't functioning properly at the Natanz enrichment center in central Iran, the largest complex in Iran's nuclear program.

That has forced the Iranians to depend on the crash-prone P1 cascades and these are starting to wear out, the study observed, with output steadily shrinking.

The ISIS report noted Iran was also finding it increasingly difficult to obtain maraging steel, a strengthened special alloy. Supplies apparently have been severely reduced because of the sanctions.

In a bid to counter this, the Iranians have sought to use carbon fiber to make the tubes and bellows that link the centrifuges themselves.

But this "is a more challenging material to work with … and may also be in short supply," Julian Borger, international security analyst of Britain's Guardian newspaper, wrote.

A separate report, co-written by David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq who is president and founder of the ISIS, suggested that the mysterious Stuxnet computer worm, which infected the program's computer system in 2010, may have shortened the lifespan of thousands of new-model centrifuges.

It is widely believed that infiltrating Stuxnet into the Iranian system was the work of Israel's intelligence services, possibly with U.S. help, as part of a covert sabotage campaign against Iran's nuclear program that seems to have had considerable success.

Also, five scientists linked to the nuclear program have been assassinated in and Tehran over the last two or three years. Others have reportedly defected.

Israel has never acknowledged a role in such clandestine operations but is seen by many in the region as the work of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service which has a history of assassinating nuclear and missile scientists in Egypt and Iraq since the 1950s.

Dummy companies set up in Europe have provided Iran with faulty equipment that has slowed down the all-important enrichment program. This could have contributed to the problems afflicting the process.

In September 2010, the Iranians acknowledged that Stuxnet had sabotaged its computer systems.

Computer experts generally agree that the Stuxnet virus, one of the most sophisticated malware systems ever detected, could only have been the work of one or several intelligence services.

The Israeli military's highly secretive Unit 8200, part of Military Intelligence, was generally seen as the culprit.

On April 25, Iran said it had been hit by "an espionage virus" it called Stars. That, too, was widely perceived as an Israeli cyberwar operation.

Meantime, Israel's leaders are growing increasingly concerned that Iran may be getting closer to being able to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level required for a nuclear weapon.

"Another alarming element for Israel is Iran's announcement last month that it is moving a cascade of advanced centrifuges to the Fordo facility" dug inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom south of Tehran, The Jerusalem Post reported Oct. 3.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said this facility cannot be destroyed by standard airstrikes. But Israel now has 55 U.S.-made bunker-buster bombs capable to taking out installations deep underground.

The Israelis suspect Iran plans to amass enough enriched uranium to enable it to able to manufacture several nuclear warheads for missiles quickly for a surprise attack.