January 10, 2020
Russia says it has stopped helping Iran at its under-ground centrifuge complex in Fordo, arguing that what Iran is planning to do there is not workable.
Many, however, suspect Moscow is bowing out of the work in order to avoid crossing the United States, but it made a point of blaming Iran and avoiding any criticism of the US.
Several weeks ago, the United States renewed sanctions waivers so as to allow Russia, China, France and Britain to keep working on nuclear projects with Iran despite the fact that the United States has bowed out of the nuclear deal. Many Republicans in the Senate were incensed. President Trump then backed down and said the US would cancel the one waiver dealing with Fordo as of December 15.
If Russia continued working with Iran at Fordo, that would open Russia to yet more American sanctions—sanctions that have been hurting Russia.
To the surprise of all, Russia didn’t wait to see whether the Americans would impose new sanctions. Instead, on December 5, it announced that it was suspending all work with Iran at Fordo, blaming Iran with coming up with a crazy idea for what to do at Fordo.
Last month, in Iran’s fourth and latest walk-back from the nuclear deal, Tehran said it would resume uranium enrichment on about two-thirds of the centrifuges at Fordo. As part of the nuclear deal, it had agreed to stop all uranium enrichment at the site, converting all the centrifuges from uranium work to preparing medical isotopes. Russia has the contract to help Iran with the conversion.
But Russia has now panned that plan to use one-third of the centrifuges for medical isotopes and two-thirds for uranium enrichment, saying it is not safe to prepare medical isotopes in the same hall where uranium is being enriched and traces of uranium are floating in the air.
Russia’s TVEL company, a subsidiary of Rusatom, the Russian firm that is building nuclear power reactors in Iran, said in a statement that Iran’s decision to resume uranium enrichment at Fordo makes it impossible to convert the facility to produce radioactive isotopes for medical purposes.
The company said uranium enrichment is technologically incompatible with production of such isotopes. It added that Iran would need to disassemble the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and decontaminate the room to continue the conversion work.
The company said it had informed Iran of its decision.
Behruz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Iran could do the conversion work itself and didn’t need Russia’s help. He didn’t respond to what the Russians said about running centrifuges for medical isotopes in the same room with centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.
Last month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov insisted that the project at Fordo would continue despite the resumption of uranium enrichment.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Russia and Iran were supposed to work together to turn Fordo into a research center to produce radioactive isotopes of tellurium and xenon for medical use. It was monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.