A handout satellite image shows a general view of the Natanz nuclear facility after a fire, in Natanz, Iran July 8, 2020  -(photo credit: MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

Iran has installed extra advanced centrifuges at its underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz that was hit by a blast last week, a report by the U.N. atomic watchdog on Wednesday showed, deepening Iran’s breaches of its nuclear deal with major powers.

The explosion and a power outage damaged an unknown number of centrifuges and Iranian state TV has shown footage of machines that it says were replaced there. Iran has blamed Israel for the explosion. Israel has not commented formally on it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report was not clear on how many centrifuges are in use but it gave “up to” numbers of advanced machines installed at the plant that were higher than previously indicated. The report made no mention of the explosion or its effect on the plant’s activity.

“On 21 April 2021, the Agency verified at FEP that: … six cascades of up to 1,044 IR-2m centrifuges; and two cascades of up to 348 IR-4 centrifuges … were installed, of which a number were being used,” the IAEA report to member states said, referring to the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. The report was seen by Reuters.

According to a previous report, the IAEA verified on March 31 that Iran was using 696 IR-2m machines and 174 IR-4 machines at the FEP.

Wednesday’s report is the latest evidence that Iran is pressing ahead with the installation of the advanced machines, even though it is not allowed to use them to produce enriched uranium under the 2015 agreement.

The accord only lets Iran produce enriched uranium at its underground Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz with first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which are far less efficient than the advanced models.

Wednesday’s report also said Iran informed the IAEA that it plans to install four more cascades, or clusters, of IR-4 centrifuges at the FEP, where both of the IR-4 cascades it had planned have now been installed.

European parties to the agreement have seen progress in the first two rounds of indirect US-Iran negotiations to revive the deal but said on Wednesday that there were still major hurdles to overcome.

The United States withdrew from the accord in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran under President Donald Trump, who objected to the deal and sought to wreck it. Iran responded as of 2019 by breaching many of the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/iran-installed-more-advanced-centrifuges-at-natantz-iaea-665931

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Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday announced to state media that the Islamic Republic had completed construction of a facility capable of producing advanced centrifuges at its nuclear plant Natanz, fulfilling threats that it would continue nuclear production in the event that the US withdraw from the 2014 nuclear deal and slap heavy sanctions on the country.

“Khamenei ordered us to set up and complete a very advanced hall for the construction of modern centrifuges, and this hall has now been fully equipped and set up,” said the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to IRNA news agency, according to Reuters.

In recent months, Iran has made known its plans to increase its uranium enrichment capacity. In May, following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, a letter was submitted to the Atomic Energy Agency “regarding the start of certain activities,” according to Salehi, indicating work had begun on the infrastructure for building advanced centrifuges at the Natanz facility.

However, Salehi vowed in the letter that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities would remain within the framework of the crumbling agreement.

“What we are doing does not violate the (2015 nuclear) agreement,” he said, noting that this was just the start of the production process and “does not mean that we will start assembling the centrifuges.”

Under the landmark deal, Iran can build parts for the centrifuges as long as it does not put them into operation within the first decade.

Salehi also emphasized that these moves “do not mean the negotiations [with Europe] have failed.”

The Iran nuclear deal is among the multilateral agreements that Trump bashes as part of his “America First” stance. Here, Iranians gather next to a replica of a Ghadr medium-range ballistic missile during a demonstration in Tehran on November 4, 2017   ATTA KENARE (AFP/File)

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TEHRAN, Iran –  Iran says it has restarted production at a “major” uranium facility involved in its nuclear program, though it still pledges to follow the terms of the country’s landmark atomic deal now under threat after President Donald Trump pulled America out of the accord.

Iranian comments about the Isfahan plant, which produces material needed to make enriched uranium, appear aimed at pressuring Europeans and others to come up with a way to circumvent new American sanctions.

Already, many international organizations are pulling back from promised billion-dollar deals with Tehran and the country’s currency has entered a free-fall against the dollar.

What comes next likely will resemble Iran’s response to previous confrontation with the West over its contested atomic program.

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A PLANT REOPENS

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a statement late Wednesday that it reopened a plant that converts yellowcake, a uranium powder, into uranium hexafluoride gas. That gas is what scientists put inside of centrifuges to make enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear power plants or in atomic bombs. Iran long has said its program is peaceful, though the West and the United Nations point to work Iran did years earlier that could be used to weaponize its program.

The “production plant at Isfahan UCF Complex has been practically inactive since 2009 because of the lack of yellowcake in the country,” the organization said in its statement. That marks an Iranian acknowledgement of something it denied back in 2009 — that it had exhausted its sole supply of yellowcake, which came under a deal that Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made with apartheid South Africa in the 1970s.

Since the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran has purchased yellowcake from Kazakhstan and Russia, as well as mined its own domestically. The accord allows for that, but limits Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 3.67 percent, enough to use in a nuclear power plant but far lower than the 90 percent needed for an atomic weapon.

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TENSIONS OVER TRUMP

Since Trump’s decision to pull America from the nuclear deal, Iran has sought to pressure other nations to stick with it. Iranian officials — from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on down — have vowed to boost the country’s uranium enrichment capacity. The moves they have outlined would not violate the accord, but would allow Iran to quickly ramp up enrichment if the agreement unravels.

Officials also have appeared in state media video and pictures at Isfahan with advanced IR-2M, IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges labeled in English in the background. Those models are all believed to produce three to five times more enriched uranium in a year than the IR-1s that Iran is allowed to use under the deal, according to Western anti-proliferation experts.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran also released a video Thursday showing the first drum of yellowcake being put through the reopened facility, located 410 kilometers (255 miles) south of Tehran, as dramatic music played in the background.

“It is important that the resumption of the Isfahan UCF … provides for the fulfillment and execution of the supreme leader’s order to prepare for an increase in enrichment capacity,” the organization said in its statement late Wednesday.

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WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT

Trump’s hard line, as well as the United States ordering its allies to stop buying Iranian crude oil, only increases the change of the wider nuclear deal collapsing. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that Iran’s “ambitions for wastefully expanding its nuclear program … only add to the suffering of the people of Iran.”

A guide for what happens next likely can be seen in how Iran initially handled its nuclear confrontation with the West. In 2005, Iran acknowledged converting yellowcake into uranium tetrafluoride, a step below the uranium hexafluoride needed for centrifuges. While allowed under the terms of a then-European deal, it came as negotiations with Tehran had become deadlocked.

Iran a short time later removed U.N. seals from equipment to produce uranium hexafluoride, again stopping as negotiations with the West continued. But by February 2006, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered uranium enrichment to resume in earnest.

“Iran’s decision to master nuclear technology and the production of nuclear fuel is irreversible,” Ahmadinejad would say, putting his country on a collision course with the West that saw crippling sanctions imposed.

For now, Iran remains governed by President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate with Iran’s theocracy whose administration brokered the deal. However, Rouhani has faced increasing criticism from hard-liners, some of whom have openly called for the country to be run by military officials.

Final say on the nuclear program, however, rests with Khamenei.

“In the face of the excessive demands of the opposite side, a courageous move must be made,” Khamenei said in May.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/06/28/ap-explains-iran-reopens-uranium-plant-in-its-latest-gamble.html

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