President Ahmadinejad surveying Natanz plant
Photo: AFP
Iran still far from bomb
Despite optimistic declarations, Iranians facing numerous technical problems
On Wednesday, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that 3,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges are now operational, but Israeli intelligence officials have cast great doubt on the veracity of this claim. The officials say that as a result of a wide array of malfunctions, Iran is still a long way away from reaching the point of no return; that is, acquiring very high level uranium enrichment capabilities that would be sufficient to produce nuclear weapons.
About a year ago, Iran inaugurated its experimental uranium enrichment site at Natanz. This facility is an underground site that houses 3,000 centrifuges. According to Israeli intelligence sources and foreign reports, Iran has encountered technical difficulties in connecting the centrifuges and operating them at high speed – which is required in order to enrich uranium at a high level. Iran is also reportedly facing severe problems related to wear and tear.
Six months ago, CBS reported on a series of mysterious malfunctions at Natanz that resulted from the supply of flawed components, which exploded upon their installation by foreign companies that in fact worked on behalf of the American intelligence establishment and “its allies.”
In another area in Natanz, the Iranians started to build another underground enrichment facility expected to comprise 30,000 to 50,000 centrifuges.
Iran is indeed advancing, all the time, in its uranium enrichment project, but even once the centrifuges work as they should it would take a long time to produce the material needed for a nuclear bomb. Iran is still very far away from the point of no return declared by President Ahmadinejad.
However, despite of the above, a uniformity of interests has surprisingly emerged among Iran, Israel, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). All of them are interested in presenting the Iranian nuclear project’s technological progress as more advanced than it actually is in reality.
Israel wishes to warn the world about the danger, enhance the sense of threat, and stress that we are at the eleventh hour. However, we must recall that from as early as 2001, Israel repeatedly warned the US that Teheran is “six months away” from reaching a “technological threshold” that would provide it with sufficient know-how to produce a bomb.
Provocative and arrogant
Iran is careful not to cross the line and become a pariah state like North Korea, but it’s unwilling to renounce its aspirations for nuclear weapons. The delay tactics were meant to put off the sanctions, but now that they have been imposed, Tehran shifted to the next phase. It confesses to, provocatively and arrogantly, scientific achievements that have not yet been achieved due to a basic assumption that any agreement to be signed in the future will use the point reached by Iran as a point of reference.Therefore, Iran wishes to advance as fast as possible technologically, and start the negotiations from there.
The IAEA chief, a very unpopular figure in Israel, has been making a series of declarations, some of them contradictory, on the matter. Basically, ElBaradei claims that Iran is three to eight years away from a bomb, and that it is no longer possible to stop its nuclear project. However, he did not find any proof that Tehran is indeed attempting to produce a bomb. He has not ruled that Iran is engaged in prohibited actions, but at the same time he is prompting the world to come up with a quick diplomatic solution.
According to ElBaradei, Iran has already reached the point of no return, and therefore the American demand to end Iranian uranium enrichment must be relinquished in favor of a compromise between the sides.
