WarSclerotic

A new report to be circulated to IAEA member states later this week is expected to say that Iran installed 350 new centrifuges in its underground Fordow facility since May, AFP quoted Vienna-based diplomats as saying on Wednesday.

Iran is enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent — easily upgraded to the 90 percent needed for bombs — at Fordow, buried deep inside a mountain near the holy Shi’ite city of Qom to protect it from foreign attack.

The Vienna diplomats also expect the report to chastise Iran over sanitizing its military base at Parchin.

The ongoing sanitization efforts, meant to eliminate evidence of possible nuclear work at the site, may make inspections “pointless,” according to the diplomats.

Iran indicated on Monday it might allow diplomats visiting Tehran for this week’s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to inspect the Parchin military base, which UN nuclear experts say may have been used for nuclear-related explosives tests.

When asked about the possibility, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh said: “Such a visit is not customary in such meetings…. However at the discretion of authorities, Iran would be ready for such a visit,” the Iranian government-linked news agency Young Journalists Club reported.

Any visit to Parchin by NAM representatives would do little to calm Western concerns or those of the IAEA whose talks with the Iranians ended on Friday without agreement.

The UN body suspects that Iran has conducted explosives tests in a steel chamber at Parchin relevant for the development of nuclear weapons, possibly a decade ago.

Last week diplomatic sources said Iran had covered the building believed to house the explosives chamber with a tent-like structure, fueling suspicions about a clean-up there.

Iran says Parchin, a vast, sprawling complex southeast of Tehran, is a conventional military facility and has dismissed allegations about it as “ridiculous”.

Reuters contributed to this report.