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Analysis: Spinning Iran's Centrifuges

Council on Foreign Relations

May 18, 2007
Prepared by: Lionel Beehner

Iran is making progress with its nuclear program. That is the assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will officially issue its latest report next week. After short-notice inspections (AP) at Natanz revealed that Iranian engineers were operating 1,300 centrifuges and producing reactor-ready fuel, nuclear experts now predict the Islamic Republic could have as many as three thousand centrifuges installed by midsummer. Once operational, these would be enough to produce fissile material for one nuclear weapon per year. The Iranians previously had technical difficulties spinning the centrifuges at the speeds needed to produce nuclear fuel, but they appear to have solved this obstacle (BBC) and developed “knowledge about how to enrich.” Although Tehran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, Western governments accuse it of seeking the capability to build a nuclear weapon.

The latest developments may alter Western diplomats’ timetables. “The worst-case estimate,” writes Ephraim Asculai, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, in the Canada Free Press, “is that Iran could have a sufficient quantity of HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a nuclear weapon as early as 2008 or 2009.” Yet some American and Israeli experts suggest Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, may have overstated Iran’s nuclear progress to avert further sanctions (Haaretz) from being imposed.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.