Mar 30, 2014 03:00 am | Aaron Stein
The
Islamic Republic of Iran first began to explore uranium enrichment in
1985. The program limped along for close to fifteen years, before
Iranian scientists successfully introduced uranium hexafluoride into
IR-1 centrifuges sometime in 1999. Iran began enrichment at Natanz in
2007. And now, Iran has some 20,000 IR-1’s under vacuum, with close to 10,000 actually enriching uranium to 3.5%.As part of the recently concluded Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic agreed that “a comprehensive solution would involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.” The two sides are now haggling over the number of centrifuges, as part of a concerted American effort to decrease Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium, so as to lengthen the time in which Iran could reenrich its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons grade in a so-called “breakout” scenario. (Iran would then have to fashion that weapons-grade uranium into a usable weapon.)
The Gulf States—like Israel—have expressed deep reservations about Iran retaining its enrichment program, but appear to have acquiesced to a formula whereby the time in which Iran can “break out” is more than a year. The GCC appears to have accepted that the International Atomic Energy Agency can detect the diversion of any Iranian fissile material within that time period, and that the United States would then use military force to destroy the program.
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