with joy and thanks, welcoming it as a new “step forward” because it emphasized Iran’s efforts at “cooperation and transparency.”
One had to wonder if the Islamic Republic was reading the same IAEA report the rest of the world was looking at. In an eight-page text, the IAEA used the following eight phrases to make absolutely clear that the Islamic Republic was not being transparent or cooperating or doing what it is required to do:
• “contrary to relevant resolutions;”
• “contrary to relevant resolutions;”
• “the agency is still awaiting a substantive response from Iran;”
• “contrary to relevant resolutions;”
• “in contravention of these obligations;”
• “contrary to relevant resolutions;”
• “Iran is not implementing a number of its obligations;” and
• “Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation.”
Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, said the report “repeated the very important message that no diversion in the nuclear activities has been made. Indeed, the report did say that. Of course, no one has accused Iran of any diversion.
Furthermore, the IAEA didn’t exactly laud Iran for non-diversion. The full sentence in the report said: “Notwithstanding that certain of the activities being undertaken by Iran at some of the facilities are contrary to relevant resolutions of the [IAEA] Board of Governors and the [UN] Security Council, as indicated below, the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at these facilities.”
Despite all the complaints in the report about lack of transparency by Iran, Soltanieh said the report was “evidence of Iran’s transparent and peaceful nuclear activities.”
That ignored the concluding phrase of the report: “The Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
In fact, the latest quarterly report went further than any previous report in raising a red flag about possible Iranian military nuclear work: “The Agency is increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency continues to receive new information.… The information available to the Agency in connection with those outstanding issues is extensive and comprehensive and has been acquired both from many Member States and through its own efforts. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of technical details, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved.”
Simplifying the verbiage, the IAEA was saying it finds allegations Iran has a nuclear weapons program to be “credible.”
The report confirms that Iran has installed two new centrifuge designs beyond the 1950s’ design that Iran calls the IR-1. The IAEA said Iran had installed and is running 136 IR-2m and 27 IR-4 centrifuges as of the end of August.
Those centrifuges were installed in the experimental part of the Natanz centrifuge facility, not in the giant industrial hall buried deep below the ground. That hall is designed to hold 54,000 centrifuges. As of the end of August, it only held about 8,000 centrifuges, all of the IR-1 design, the IAEA said, or only 15 percent of capacity.
More importantly, that hall has been stuck at about 8,000 centrifuges ever since August 2009. (See chart.) In other words, for two years the Islamic Republic has not been building toward the 54,000 centrifuges it says it plans to install. What’s more, the installed centrifuges produced slightly less enriched uranium this past quarter than in previous quarters.
Some note that the installation of more centrifuges halted about the time of the Stuxnet attack and think Stuxnet may be the cause of the program slowing. Others think Iran is very dissatisfied with its primitive IR-1 centrifuge and its many problems and decided not to build more of them but to wait for a more advanced design to be ready. Yet others speculate that sanctions have prevented Iran from getting the quantities of items like carbon fiber that it needs to build centrifuges in quantity. (Iran last week said it was now making carbon fiber itself because it could not buy it abroad.) Still others speculate that those officials who fear a major expansion of the centrifuge program could prompt an attack by the West have been able to stall any increase in the number of installed centrifuges.