WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials from several countries say Iran
in recent weeks has virtually completed an underground nuclear
enrichment plant, racing ahead despite international pressure and heavy
economic sanctions in what experts say may be an effort to give it
leverage in any negotiations with the United States and its allies.
Related
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Israeli Officials Asked to Be Silent on Issue of U.S.-Iran Talks (October 26, 2012)
The installation of the last of nearly 3,000 centrifuges at a site
called Fordo, deep under a mountain inside a military base near the holy
city of Qum, puts Iran closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon,
or come up to the edge, if its leaders ultimately decide to proceed.
The United States, Israel and the United Nations have all vowed to
prevent that from happening, imposing increasingly tough sanctions on
the country and using cyberwarfare
to slow its progress in obtaining a weapon. President Obama said last
week that the time for a negotiated settlement was “running out.”
Talks this year between Iran and the so-called P5-plus-1 — the five
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany —
have made little progress. The New York Times reported Sunday that the
United States and Iran had reached a tacit agreement to hold direct
talks after the American presidential election. Mr. Obama denied the
report but said in Monday’s debate with Mitt Romney that he was open to
such talks.
Iran’s progress at Fordo was disclosed by officials familiar with the findings of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
who have been to the site recently as part of their regular visits. The
officials included some from European governments who have opposed
taking military action to slow the Iranian program, arguing that
sanctions — with a mix of covert action — are far preferable.
The report comes at a moment when Iran has emerged as a point of
contention in the foreign policy debates surrounding the approaching
election. Mr. Romney has charged that the president has been “weak” on
Iran, and said that Iran’s production of nuclear material had expanded
greatly during Mr. Obama’s tenure. But he also embraced diplomacy in the
debate on Monday evening.
Asked about the intelligence reports, Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for
the National Security Council, said, “While we can’t comment on a report
that has yet to be released, we remain concerned about Iran’s defiance
of its international obligations.” He noted that “the president is
determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and continues
to believe there is time and space for diplomacy.”
Until just two months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel
suggested he would not allow the Fordo plant to go into operation,
warning that once it did Iran would have begun to enter a “zone of
immunity” where it could produce nuclear fuel without fear of an Israeli
strike. Israel does not possess the bunker-busting bombs that would be
needed to destroy the facility, though the United States does have one
weapon that can do the job: the “massive ordnance penetrator” that just
entered the American arsenal.
In September, however, Israeli officials suddenly stopped using the
“zone of immunity” phrase, and Mr. Netanyanu told the United Nations
that he could wait until late spring before any taking military action,
saying that was when Iran would be on the cusp of the ability to produce
a bomb. European and American officials interpreted that announcement
as evidence that Mr. Netanyahu concluded that Israel could not get
through the more than 200 feet of rock over the Fordo plant without
American help.
The prospect of a renewed round of diplomacy may explain the pace of
activity at the underground site. The fact that the Fordo plant is
approaching full operation, shortening the amount of time it would need
to build a weapon, gives Iran added ability to exert pressure on the
United States and its allies. “When slapped with new sanctions,” said
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department official who now studies the
Iranian program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London, “Iran typically likes to pick up the pace of its enrichment
work to try to show that it can’t be pressured into submission.”
The installation of the last centrifuges at Fordo represents a milestone
for the Iranians that the Obama administration hoped to avoid. In
September 2009, Mr. Obama, along with the leaders of Britain and France,
revealed the existence of the site, in an effort to galvanize
international efforts to stop Iran’s program. His top national security
aides predicted that the public exposure would force Iran to abandon the plant.
While that did not happen, a senior administration official said
Thursday that the exposure of the plant’s existence three years ago
“eliminated its use as a ‘sneak out’ venue,” because it forced Iran to
allow inspectors inside the facility. “Sneak out” is a phrase that
connotes covert production of bomb fuel, while “break out” is used to
describe a race for a bomb. Mr. Obama, in the Monday debate, insisted
that “we have a sense of when they would get breakout capacity,” a
phrase that left many thinking that was the line he would not let Iran
cross.
While the plant is not yet fully running — fewer than half of all its
centrifuges are spinning out enriched uranium — Iran could have it doing
so within months, officials say. Fordo is designed to make “medium
enriched” fuel that is relatively close to bomb grade, and American
officials worry that, in a relatively short amount of time, that fuel
could be converted to a type suitable for weapons. But as Mr. Vietor
noted, with inspectors visiting, “We are in a position to closely
observe Iran’s program and detect any effort by Iran to begin production
of weapons-grade uranium.”
In August, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Fordo was roughly
three-quarters complete, and that Iran had installed 2,140 centrifuges
there, a doubling since a previous report three months before.
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