Iran spinning centrifuges – and half-truths

Iranian officials are well known for always looking for bargaining chips, and a centrifuge target that Tehran knew it could not actually achieve any time soon nevertheless gave Iran potential leverage in any future negotiations with the IAEA – and particularly its most powerful member, the United States – on its nuclear program. It also allowed Iran to appear responsive to ElBaradei’s pleas to slow down the program.

Iranian willingness to reach formal agreement in three separate meetings with ElBaradei in July and August to resolve all remaining issues on its past nuclear research by November was clearly aimed at moving the Iran nuclear dossier from the United Nations Security Council back to the IAEA and averting a military confrontation with the US.
guarantee against any nuclear-weapons program through an intrusive inspection regime, in return for an approved enrichment program limited to a number of centrifuges well short of what would be required to produce nuclear weapons.

The argument that Iran cannot be allowed to have any uranium enrichment assumes that a sufficient number of centrifuges by itself would allow Iran to have the capability to build nuclear weapons. News media have routinely repeated the statement that 3,000 centrifuges could enrich enough uranium to make a bomb, provided the machines run for the requisite periods.

But ElBaradei observed in an interview with The Financial Times on February 19 that even if Iran had 3,000 or more centrifuges operating, they could not go beyond 5% enrichment, which would be far below what would be required for weapons-grade uranium, as long they remain under an IAEA inspection regime.

In February 2006, ElBaradei suggested that Iran should be allowed a small-scale enrichment program on Iranian soil in exchange for guarantees of no full nuclear-fuel production that could be diverted for military purposes. Such an agreement would allow the international community to know with certainty rather than having to guess whether Iran is actually enriching uranium to weapons-grade level or not.

Asia Times