February 21-2014
Iran has developed an entirely new generation of centrifuges that is 15 times faster than those currently enriching Iran’s uranium, atomic chief Ali-Akbar Salehi said last Monday.
That may liven up the nuclear negotiations when they begin next week.
“We unveiled a new generation of centrifuges that surprised the Westerners…. This new machine is 15 times more powerful than the previous generation,” he told state broadcasting.
He didn’t say how this could have surprised Westerners since this was the first announcement that Iran had such a centrifuge.
Salehi said the centrifuge was not a violation of the November 24 agreement between Iran and Big Six. “We successfully argued that this was allowed within the research and development article in the agreement,” Salehi said.
The problem is that Salehi did not name the new centrifuge. Under the November agreement, Iran can continue R&D work on the types of centrifuges it was working on in November. But it can’t do any work on any new types of centrifuges.
A centrifuge that could enrich uranium 15 times faster than Iran’s current IR-1 centrifuges would definitely concern the Big Six since it would allow Iran to move to a nuclear weapon 15 times more quickly.
