Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Tuesday’s announcement was “worrisome” but added: “The quality of the cascades running now is very low, maybe at 20 per cent efficiency, so why would they add more before the existing ones are working properly?
“This is obviously about national pride and beating their chests, to show that they are not going to be pushed around by sanctions,” he said.
08 April 2008: Financial Times
By Anna Fifield and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and Daniel Dombey in Washington
Iran has started installing an additional 6,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its main nuclear facility, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad declared on Tuesday, in a move likely to heighten western fears about Tehran’s nuclear intentions.
The extra equipment would enable Iran to triple its current capacity to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel or weapons grade material.
“Today, the process of installing 6,000 new centrifuges at the facility in Natanz has started,” Mr Ahmadi-Nejad said during a visit to the plant to mark national nuclear technology day.
An Iranian nuclear official told the FT that the additional centrifuges began to be installed “some weeks” ago.
However, it takes time to install centrifuges and make them operate smoothly. Although Iran has already installed 3,000 centrifuges, which in theory could produce enough fissile material for a bomb in as little as a year, western intelligence agencies say Iran is unlikely to be able to produce sufficient fissile material until between 2010 and 2015.
Last year, a US National Intelligence Estimate also concluded that Iran halted efforts to weaponise “uranium” in 2003, although work on enrichment and the country’s missile programme continued.
Tehran insists its programme is purely for peaceful purposes, although the US and the European Union suspect it of seeking the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.
Tuesday’s announcement comes despite United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran halt uranium enrichment.
The US and the world’s other big powers are currently discussing whether to impose further sanctions on Iran or instead improve their offer for Iran to suspend enrichment activities.
”The Iranian government continues to be in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and with each step it takes it continues to isolate its people and risk further international financial and diplomatic sanctions,” said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Tuesday’s announcement was “worrisome” but added: “The quality of the cascades running now is very low, maybe at 20 per cent efficiency, so why would they add more before the existing ones are working properly?
“This is obviously about national pride and beating their chests, to show that they are not going to be pushed around by sanctions,” he said.
Iranian state television did not say whether the new centrifuges were Pakistani P1s, as are the centrifuges currently running in Natanz, or whether they were the new, more efficient Iranian IR2s.
News agencies last week quoted diplomats in Vienna as week saying that Iran had installed as many as 300 new centrifuges in Natanz, some of which were IR2s.
Separately, Iranian state media said that Hossein Mousavian, a top former nuclear negotiator, had been given a two-year suspended jail sentence and barred from diplomatic posts for five years for “disrupting the country’s security”. The government had originally accused him of the more serious charge of “espionage”.
