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Iran has begun construction on its Natanz nuclear facility, recently released satellite images show.
This came as the UN nuclear agency acknowledged that Tehran was building an underground advanced centrifuge assembly plant, a key step in enriching uranium as a nuclear fuel, after the latter erupted in a sabotage attack reported last summer. past.
The construction comes as the United States approaches Election Day in a campaign pitting against President Donald Trump, whose maximum pressure campaign against Iran has led Tehran to abandon all limits to its atomic program, and Joe Biden, who has expressed its willingness to return to the agreement.
The outcome of the vote will likely decide which approach the United States will take.
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* Iran informs United Nations of increased nuclear enrichment capacity
Rising tensions between Iran and the United States almost sparked a war earlier in the year.
Since August, Iran has built a new or remodeled highway south of Natanz to what analysts believe is a former firing range for security forces at the enrichment facility, images from San-based Planet Labs show. Francisco.
A satellite image from Monday (local time) shows the site cleared with what appears to be construction equipment there.
Analysts at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies say they believe the site is being excavated.
“That road also goes into the mountains, so it may be the fact that they are digging some kind of structure that is going to be in front and that there is going to be a tunnel in the mountains,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the institute studying Iran’s nuclear program. “Or maybe they’re just going to bury him there.”
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his inspectors were aware of the construction.
He said Iran had previously informed IAEA inspectors, that they continue to have access to Iran’s sites even though the country has strayed from many boundaries of its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, known as the Plan. Joint Integral Action, or JCPOA.
“They have started, but it is not finished. It’s a long process, “Grossi said.
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, declined to comment on the satellite images or discuss specific details of the construction, but said Iran was being transparent with its actions.
“Nothing in Iran regarding its peaceful nuclear program is being done in secret, in full compliance with the JCPOA, and as the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed,” Miryousefi said in an email.
“This case is no different,” he said.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told state television last month that the destroyed air facility was being replaced by one “in the heart of the mountains around Natanz.”
Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA deal with Iran, in which Tehran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
As the United States stepped up sanctions, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned those limits as a series of escalating incidents brought the two countries to the brink of war earlier in the year.
Iran now enriches uranium to 4.5 percent purity and, according to the latest IAEA report, had a reserve of 2,105 kilograms. Experts generally say that 1,050 kilograms of low-enriched uranium is enough material to be re-enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90% purity for a nuclear weapon.
Grossi told The Associated Press, however, that the current IAEA estimate is that Iran does not yet have enough to produce a weapon.
Outside experts now estimate that Iran’s so-called “breakthrough time” – the time it takes for it to build a nuclear weapon if it so chooses – was cut from one year with the deal to just three months. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, although Western countries fear that Tehran could use it to search for atomic weapons.
Natanz, built underground to toughen it up against airstrikes, has long been at the center of those fears since its discovery in 2002. Centrifuges there still spin in vast corridors under 7.6 meters of concrete. Air defense positions surround the facility in Iran’s central Isfahan province.
Despite being one of the safest sites in Iran, Natanz was attacked by the Stuxnet computer virus, believed to be the brainchild of the United States and Israel, prior to the nuclear deal.
In July, a fire and explosion struck its advanced centrifuge assembly facility in an incident that Iran later described as sabotage. Suspicion has fallen on Israel, despite claims of responsibility by a never-before-known group.
There have been tensions with the IAEA and Iran including in Natanz, and Tehran accused an inspector of testing positive for explosives last year. However, so far the inspectors have been able to maintain their vigilance, something Lewis described as very important.
“As long as they declare to the IAEA in the right time, there is no prohibition to put things underground,” he said. “For me, the real red line would be if the Iranians started hampering the IAEA.”
For now, it is unclear how deep Iran will go into this new facility. And while the sabotage will delay Iran in assembling new centrifuges, Lewis warned that the program will eventually regroup as it had before and continue to accumulate more and more material beyond the scope of the abandoned nuclear deal.
“We bought a few months,” he said. “But what good are a few months if we don’t know what we are going to use them for?”
