19th
February 2009
Iran has built up a
stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear
bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
In a development that
comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its
policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear
programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more
nuclear material than previously thought.
They said Iran had
accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium
hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.
If such a quantity were
further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of
fissile material – enough for a bomb.
“It appears that Iran has
walked right up to the threshold of having enough low
enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a
single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief
scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
The new figures come in a
report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the
UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This
revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium
had previously been underestimated.
When the agency carried
out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran
had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride
– more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran
produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.
“It’s sure certain that
if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these
measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks,”
Mr Zimmerman said.
Iran’s success in
reaching such a “breakout capacity” – a stage that would
allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb
in a matter of months – crosses a “red line” that for
years Israel has said it would not accept.
UN officials emphasise
that to produce fissile material Iran would have to
reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched
uranium rather than low enriched uranium – a highly
visible step that would take months – or to shift its
stockpile to a clandestine site.
No such sites have been
proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed
evidence of its nuclear programme.
A senior UN official
added that countries usually waited until they had an
enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs
before proceeding to develop fissile material. He
conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for
one bomb.
“Do they have enough low
enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity
[enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]?” he said. “In
theory this is possible, [although] with the present
configuration at Natanz it isn’t.”
David Albright, the head
of the Institute for Science and International Security,
said: “If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, it’s
entering an era in which it could do so quickly.”
