November 27-2015
The Islamic Republic has been dismantling its centrifuges at an astonishing pace in what appears to be an effort by the Rohani Administration to get sanctions lifted before the Majlis elections on February 26.
The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that, as of November 15, Iran had dismantled 4,530 centrifuges or just over one- third of all those it must dismantle before sanctions can be lifted. If that pace of dismantling—162 centrifuges per day—is continued, Iran could have the entire job completed by around January 7.
The report said that Iran had 19,138 centrifuges installed when the dismantling began October 18. It must reduce that number by 68 percent to 6,104 before sanctions will be lifted.
Other tasks must also be completed before sanctions end. Chief among the other tasks are getting rid of 98 percent of the country’s stored stock of enriched uranium and destroying the current core of the planned nuclear reactor at Arak by filling it with cement.
A month ago, a Russian official said Russian ships could load up the stock of enriched uranium by late January or early February. No one has given any other dates. If those dates prevail, then shipping out the enriched stock will likely become the long pole in the tent rather than dismantling centrifuges
The dismantled centrifuges will not be destroyed but stored in Iran under the control of the IAEA. Iran could theoretically take them back and reassemble them after 15 years. However, Behruz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said earlier this month that the current centrifuge designs are unreliable and Iran hopes to have a much better centrifuge design within a few years, which would make the stored IR-1 and IR-2 centrifuges obsolete.