Iran Joins the Nuclear Club, Moves Toward Large-Scale Enrichment
Tehran successfully enriched uranium for the first time on Tuesday, and signaled its intention to expand the program rapidly.Tehran successfully enriched uranium for the first time on Tuesday, and signaled its intention to expand the program rapidly.
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TEHRAN, Iran – Iran intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges, the country’s deputy nuclear chief said Wednesday, signaling its resolve to expand a program the international community has insisted it halt.
Iran’s president announced Tuesday the country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment activity because of suspicions the program’s aim is to make nuclear weapons.
“We will expand uranium enrichment to industrial scale at Natanz,” Deputy Nuclear Chief Mohammad Saeedi told state-run television Wednesday.
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Mainstream outlets’ coverage of U.S.-Iran relations are augmenting the Trump administration’s provocations at a critical moment.
On Monday, a Russian ship carrying almost all of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium left Iran, “fulfilling a major step in the nuclear deal struck last summer and, for the first time in nearly a decade, apparently leaving Iran with too little fuel to manufacture a nuclear weapon,” The New York Times reports.
The White House announced Sunday that Iran will start whittling down its stockpile of enriched uranium by Jan. 20, giving a sense of momentum to the agreement announced in November between Washington and Tehran.
Two days of discussion over Iran’s nuclear program ended in uncertainty Thursday, with Iran maintaining it has the right to enrich nuclear fuel and the lead negotiator for the European Union stating vaguely that “significant problems remain” with the Iranian position. Negotiations are set to resume in June.
Iran has officially declared that it has created its first domestically produced piece of raw uranium, otherwise deceptively known as non-edible yellowcake, and has subsequently delivered that uranium to a plant for enrichment.
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