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The Strange Case of Iran's Centrifuges

Iran suspended uranium enrichment for at least one day in November, a new United Nations report reveals, but it was due to technical problems. Public Policy Scholar Michael Adler examines the latest IAEA reports on Iran and Syria.

Iran suspended uranium enrichment for at least one day in November, a new United Nations report reveals. This was, however, the result of technical problems—not because Iran decided to honor calls to rein in its atomic ambitions.

Still, the news is a surprise, according to the report Tuesday from the U.N. nuclear watchdog. It comes amid speculation about whether sabotage and sanctions are now working against Iran's atomic program and whether serious talks can be kick-started to assuage fears that Iran is working to make nuclear weapons.

The condition for starting negotiations is that Iran stop uranium enrichment, the process that makes the explosive core of the bomb. Iran has vowed not to halt this strategic work.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's nine-page confidential report describes the suspension in two discrete footnotes. On Nov. 5, the report notes, some 4,800 centrifuges were spinning at Iran's Natanz plant, churning out low-enriched uranium. But "on 16 November 2010, no cascades [of centrifuge] were being fed with" uranium feedstock gas. Then the report states, "On 22 November 2010 [however], Iran informed the agency that 28 cascades were being fed."

This would mean that Iran resumed enrichment with roughly 4,600 centrifuges, out of some 8,400 now installed in Natanz.

IAEA officials gave no explanation for this suspension, but a senior diplomat close to the agency did note that Iran has shut down its centrifuges for short periods of time before, namely "on two or three occasions" since full-scale enrichment began at Natanz in February 2007. The diplomat said the agency could not verify exactly how many centrifuges are turning, since IAEA inspectors did not examine centrifuges one by one, just by cascades of 164 or 174 centrifuges each.

To this unsettling detail was added an expected one. Iran is giving only minimal cooperation under its international obligations for monitoring. When the IAEA asks the Iranians why centrifuges are turned off, their answer is predictable and succinct: None of your business.

One wonders. There have been reports that a computer virus, the Stuxnet, launched by either the United States or Israel, has caused Iranian centrifuges to vibrate out of sync and thus crash. But the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, denied Tuesday that the Stuxnet worm had brought the centrifuges down.

Meanwhile, some analysts wonder whether international sanctions are keeping Iran from getting crucial parts for its centrifuges or whether parts the Iranians have bought abroad were booby-trapped to malfunction—and so cause centrifuge cascades to break down.

Or perhaps Iran has just invested too much in its centrifuge model, the fragile P-1, which is an early design that countries like Pakistan abandoned on their way to building the bomb. Iran may be reining in its P-1 program to clear the way to replace it with a more advanced centrifuge.

The irony is that North Korea has just revealed that it built an enrichment plant outfitted with the advanced centrifuge model known as the P-2. North Korea skipped the P-1 stage entirely, leapfrogging ahead of its ally Iran.
What is certain is that Iran has fewer centrifuges turning now than it did a little more than a year ago. This slowdown has U.S. officials convinced that Iran's technical problems grant some two years' delay before Iran can move decisively forward toward making a nuclear weapon. This leaves time for diplomacy, the officials say.

Yet that diplomacy is stalled—even if talks are expected sometime in December. Iran is stubbornly continuing to enrich, the IAEA says, and it has now amassed 3,183 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, or LEU.

These facts on the ground make first steps more difficult. Washington had wanted Tehran in October last year to ship out 1,200 kilograms of LEU, when it had only about 1,600 kilograms. The goal was to get Iran to swap LEU for a promise of fuel for a research reactor making medical isotopes.

This would have left Iran with only 400-500 kilograms of LEU, just below the amount needed to refine out enough high-enriched uranium to make a bomb. LEU is uranium enriched to less than 5 percent—the refinement level required for power plants. Weapons require uranium enriched to more than 90 percent.

Since Iran now has so much more enriched uranium, the fuel swap deal would have to be significantly modified, that is, if it is to be the confidence-building measure that the United States and its five negotiating partners—Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia—are seeking in order to get talks going.

Another wrinkle is that the atomic agency revealed Tuesday that Iran has now produced 33 kilograms of uranium enriched to almost 20 percent, which Tehran says it is doing to make fuel for its research reactor. The six world powers would want Iran to cease this higher level of enrichment—a major step toward weapons-grade uranium—if talks proceed.

The IAEA report lays out the facts. But it is not much of a crystal ball for those trying to see where this crisis is headed.

The answer, of course, is political rather than technical. The key stress point is not how many centrifuges are breaking down but the cost to leaders of pursuing their policies.

The good news is that there may be some wiggle room for compromise. Iranian officials say they want to talk, to bargain, and Washington's fuel swap offer lets the Iranians keep enriching—at least in a first confidence-building stage.

It's a long, and maybe unbridgeable, way from this state of affairs to a settlement. But it's the road we are on.

The good news is that Iran's technical woes push the military option of a U.S. or Israeli attack off the table—at least for now.