Iran Using New Uranium Enrichment Machine - UN Nuclear Watchdog
Iran fed 20-percent uranium into an advanced centrifuge other than those already enriching to up to 60 percent at its Natanz site, the IAEA said on Monday.
Iran fed 20-percent uranium into an advanced centrifuge other than those already enriching to up to 60 percent at its Natanz site, the IAEA said on Monday.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency last week it had temporarily fed uranium enriched to up to 20% into extra “single machine and intermediate cascades...without any collection of products”, the IAEA said in a statement, adding it later verified Iran had begun feeding just one IR-6 centrifuge but the product was not being collected.
The move is likely to help Iran refine its knowledge of the enrichment process - something Western powers generally condemn because it is irreversible - but since this time the product is not being collected it will not immediately accelerate Iran's production of uranium enriched to close to weapons-grade.
Iran suspended multilateral talks in Vienna in June aimed at restoring the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear agreement that curbed its nuclear activities. In the meantime, it continues its uranium enrichment, stockpiling 20-percent and 60-percent enriched fissile material.
The JCPOA put a 3.65-percent enrichment cap on Iran. The 20-percent enrichment level is already high and the 60-percent degree of purity has no civilian use.
The latest move has, however, prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency to "increase the frequency and intensity of its safeguards activities" at the above-ground Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz, the IAEA said in a report seen by Reuters. As of around 90% uranium is considered weapons-grade.
The IAEA said in a statement outlining the report that Iran informed it last week of changes to the setup of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, at the plant - Iran would feed uranium enriched to up to 20% into limited numbers of extra centrifuges without collecting the product.
"On 25 October 2021, the Agency verified that Iran began feeding (uranium hexafluoride gas) enriched up to 20% U-235 into a single IR-6 centrifuge in R&D line 2 at PFEP and that the resulting product and tails streams were being re-combined," the IAEA report said, meaning that after separating the enriched product it was mixed with the centrifuge's waste and not kept.
Iran had said it planned to also feed uranium enriched to up to 20% into other single centrifuges or small- to medium-sized cascades, or clusters, of machines on the same line, but those were not being fed at the time, the IAEA said.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the pact in 2018 and reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions. About a year later, Iran started violating some of the deal's limits on uranium enrichment.
President Joe Biden announced before his election that he intended to restore the JCPOA and in April the US, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China began talks in Vienna.
Iran has also curtailed IAEA’s monitoring activities since February, demanding that US lift sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.
Report by Reuters
A few days after Mora’s one-day trip, Vatan-e Emrooz, a daily founded by an aide of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, published a report saying that the Iranian foreign ministry held a birthday party for the European envoy. The news led to some controversy on Twitter, and other media in Iran reprinted the report.
As of Sunday, October 24, Vatane-e Emrooz website seems to have been blocked by Iranian censors and its Instagram page is also not available. Its Twitter account has been inactive since October 20 when it published its report about the birthday party.
Mora had traveled to Tehran to break an impasse in reconvening the Vienna nuclear talks between Iran and world powers. Iran has stopped attending the meetings since June.
Both centrist and reformist media have criticized the foreign ministry, which has so far not officially denied the report by Vatan-e Emrooz. The centrist Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) while reporting on the birthday party, has pointed out that the move by the foreign ministry was out of order, “considering the state of relations between Iran and the other side [West] in the JCPOA negotiations.”
The reformist newspaper Entekhab, however, has gone much farther, accusing the hardliners, who control the foreign ministry, of hypocrisy in their constant attacks on former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif when he was interacting with Western diplomats, and now when they reportedly hold a birthday party for Mora.
Entekhab in an article on Saturdayemphasized that the foreign ministry has not denied the report by Vatan-e Emrooz. The website said that its reporters have tried in vain to obtain the reaction of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee. One conservative lawmaker told Entekhab, “I am not aware of the controversy”.
The website also drew attention to the silence of hardliner media over the issue. It mentioned the example of the ultra-conservative Kayhan daily, affiliated with the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. While Kayhan harshly attacked Zarif for a stroll with former US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015, now it ignores the rumor about the birthday party, the website said. It added that allowing the foreign ministry to do its job is good news, but it shows the hypocrisy of the hardliners, who constantly impeded Zarif’s work.
During his visit to Tehran, Mora met Ali Bagheri Kani, the new man in charge of the nuclear file in Iran’s foreign ministry and a well-know hardliner. Entekhab quotes Kani’s anti-Western remarks in the past and contrasts it with the alleged birthday party.