MADRID, 19 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
International monitors detected in Iran last week, diplomatic sources told Bloomberg, amounts of uranium enriched to levels just below those needed to make a working nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA, the UN nuclear agency) is now trying to determine how Iran has managed to accumulate uranium enriched to 84 percent purity, the highest level found by inspectors in the country to date, and a concentration only 6 percent below what is needed for a nuclear weapon.
Iran had previously informed the IAEA that its centrifuges were set to enrich uranium to a purity level of 60 percent.
Now, inspectors are focused on determining whether this purity has been obtained intentionally or is the product of a buildup within the network of pipes that connect the hundreds of centrifuges used to separate the isotopes.
It is the second time this month that monitors have detected suspicious activities related to enrichment, these sources point out.
This news comes at a time when Iran is increasingly estranged from the Western community and stalled talks for its return to the 2015 nuclear deal are deadlocked more than ever.
In this sense, the international condemnation led by the European Union and the United States of the repression of protests against the death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman in custody in September last year and Iran’s support for Moscow in his war against Ukraine.
For now, the IAEA is preparing its quarterly Iran safeguards report ahead of a March 6 Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, where the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear work will be high on the agenda.
Iran has not submitted required forms declaring its intention to increase uranium enrichment levels at two facilities near the cities of Natanz and Fordow, according to a diplomat.
Even if the detected material was accumulated by mistake due to technical difficulties in the operation of the centrifuge cascades, one of the diplomats points out that this finding only highlights Iran’s ability to produce highly enriched uranium.
The IAEA has repeated countless times that, beyond a certain level, the difference in purity is technically indistinguishable from the degree necessary to obtain a nuclear weapon.
The director general of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, ended up describing the international agreement last month — from which the US withdrew in 2018, three years after it was signed, by order of then-President Donald Trump — as a “shell empty” and has already advanced that Iran has enough nuclear material to manufacture several weapons of mass destruction, in case it makes the political decision to go ahead.