WarSclerotic

Iran is increasing the number of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges installed at its Natanz underground plant, despite tightening international sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran’s nuclear progress, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

For years, Iran has been trying to develop centrifuges that are more efficient than the erratic 1970s era IR-1 machines it now uses, but efforts to introduce new models have been dogged by technical hurdles and difficulty in obtaining key parts abroad.

If launched and operated successfully, the new centrifuges would enable the Islamic Republic to sharply speed up sensitive atomic activity, which it says is for peaceful energy purposes but which the West fears may be aimed at building nuclear bombs.

“It is clear Iran can build them. The question is how many and how good they are,” one Western envoy said. Another envoy commented: “A decade of diplomatic efforts has failed.”

The planned deployment of next-generation centrifuges underlines Iran’s refusal to bow to pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically and avoid a spiral into war.

In early March, Iran announced that it would build about 3,000 advanced centrifuges. But experts and diplomats said it was unclear whether it had the capability and materials needed to make so many, and also to run them smoothly.

Although still far from the target number, one diplomatic source estimated that roughly 500 to 600 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had now been put in place at the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran. According to a report issued in February by the U.N. nuclear watchdog two months ago there were only 180. At the same time, Iran had more than 12,000 old-generation centrifuges installed at Natanz, but not all were enriching.

Two other envoys in Vienna, where the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency is based, also said the number of installed IR-2m machines was growing but they did not have details. The next IAEA report on Iran is expected in late May.

The diplomats said the new centrifuges were not yet operational, but the increase in installation was still likely to add to Western alarm over Iran’s nuclear advances.

The most recent round of nuclear negotiations held between Iran and world powers in Kazakhstan in early April failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, and the United States and Israel have not ruled out military action to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

If hundreds of new centrifuges have indeed been installed, “it indicates that Iran has made a significant breakthrough both in mastering the technology and in acquiring the raw materials,” said nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

“This development will be of major concern to countries that are worried about Iran’s growing ability to quickly produce nuclear weapons.”

Iran had previously been believed to face a shortage of the high strength metals necessary to produce the new centrifuges in large numbers, but the installations suggest that Iran possesses both the technology and the raw materials to mass-produce centrifuges that can enrich uranium much faster than the more than 12,000 inefficient machines now making up the backbone of its enrichment program.

The United States, Israel, and their allies say Tehran’s nuclear secrecy and suspicions they shared with the IAEA that Iran may have worked secretly on nuclear arms makes them fear Iran may use the technology to create weapons-level uranium that can be used in an atomic bomb.

Former IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen recently said that Tehran could install 3,000 advanced centrifuges at Natanz within nine months from the startup date.