Iran is constant to complement uranium to close weapons grade

Iran is continuing to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade after UN talks have stalled, the UN’s nuclear watchdog has warned.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran’s estimated stockpile of enriched uranium had reached more than 30 times the limit set out in the 2015 agreement between Tehran and world powers.

According to a confidential IAEA report, the country’s total enriched uranium stockpile was estimated at 13,671.5 pounds as of May 11, up by 1,489.9 pounds from the last quarterly report in February.

About 313.2 pounds of the uranium is enriched up to 60 per cent – an increase of 45.4 pounds. Uranium enriched at 60 per cent purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent. 

It comes as talks aimed at improving its cooperation with the IAEA and monitoring by the watchdog in Iran are stalled, a second confidential report has revealed. 

In this picture released by the Iranian Defense Ministry on Thursday, May 25, 2023, Khorramshahr-4 missile is launched at an undisclosed location, Iran 

Head of Iran’s atomic energy department Mohammad Eslami waves to media at the conclusion of his joint press conference with International Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, after their meeting in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, on May 7, 2024

‘There has been no progress in the past year towards implementing the Joint Statement of 4 March 2023,’ it stated.

‘The Director General reiterates to the new government of Iran his call for, and disposition to continue with, the high-level dialogue and ensuing technical exchanges commenced … on 6-7 May 2024,’ it added.

In its current report, the IAEA also said Tehran has not reconsidered the agency’s September 2023 decision of barring the most experienced nuclear inspectors from monitoring its nuclear program but added that it expected Iran ‘to do so in the context of the ongoing consultations between the Agency and Iran.’

The IAEA said that the deaths of Iran’s President and Foreign Minister in a helicopter crash have caused the pause in the UN nuclear watchdog’s talks with Tehran over improving cooperation.

In its current report, the IAEA said that Iran suggested in a letter dated May 21 that discussions related to the cooperation between the IAEA and Iran ‘be continued in Tehran “on an appropriate date that will be mutually agreed upon”.’

Iran has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful, but the IAEA chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has already warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make ‘several’ nuclear bombs if it chose to do so. 

He has acknowledged the agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment.

The IAEA said that the deaths of Iran’s President and Foreign Minister in a helicopter crash have caused the pause in the UN nuclear watchdog’s talks with Tehran over improving cooperation (pictured: the memorial at the Iranian Embassy in Moscow, Russia, Monday, May 20, 2024)

The Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Fordow near Qom, in northern Iran

Iran trials a medium-range surface-to-surface missile, the Sejil-2, in northeastern Iran in 2009. Then-President Ahmadinejad said Iran was capable of sending any aggressor ‘to hell’.

Iran and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog are still negotiating over how to implement a deal struck last year to expand inspections of the Islamic Republic’s rapidly advancing atomic program.

The IAEA’s acknowledgment shows the challenges his inspectors face, years after the collapse of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers and the wider tensions gripping the Mideast over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

In December last year, the UK government warned that Iran’s stockpiles ‘are unprecedented for a state without a nuclear weapons programme’, denouncing the ‘deplorable state’ of its commitments to a 2015 deal in which Tehran agreed to slash stockpiles and enrich only to 3.67 per cent.

According to the UK government, ‘Iran has continued to violate the terms of the JCPOA agreement’ since May 2019.

The JCPOA refers to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement made between Iran, the EU and the P5+1 in 2015 to limit Iran’s enrichment programme.

Iran agreed to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 per cent, limit its enrichment activities and convert facilities to avoid further risk of nuclear proliferation.

By 2018, the IAEA was reporting that Iran was committing to its agreement after installing surveillance across plants.

But two years later, Iran said it would no longer abide by the terms of the deal but would continue to work with the IAEA, leaving the door open for a revised agreement. 

Iran has been developing nuclear technology since 1957, backed at first by the American ‘Atoms for Peace‘ programme which provided adopters with nuclear technology in return for a commitment to only using it for civilian purposes.