Diplomats - Iran Speeding Up Nuclear Weapons Development! Death to Iran! Bomb Iran NOW!

http://www.newsmax.com/international/nuclear_iran/2008/04/03/85305.html

Diplomats: Iran Assembling Centrifuges

Thursday, April 3, 2008

VIENNA, Austria -- Iran has assembled hundreds of advanced machines

reflecting a possible intention to speed up uranium enrichment, diplomats

have told The Associated Press.

One diplomat said more than 300 of the centrifuges have been linked up in

two separate units in Iran's underground enrichment plant and a third was

being assembled. He said the machines apparently are more advanced than the

thousands already running underground, suggesting they could be the

sophisticated IR-2 centrifuge that Tehran recently acknowledged testing.

But a senior diplomat said that while the new work appeared to include

advanced centrifuges, they were not IR-2s. He added that it was unclear

whether the machines were above or below ground.

The location is significant, since the aboveground site at Natanz is for

experimental work and the underground facility is the working enrichment

plant.

A third diplomat _ who like the other two closely follows Iran's nuclear

program _ confirmed that Iran had started linking up advanced centrifuges in

a configuration used for enrichment. But he said all remained above ground

and none of the machines were running.

Uranium enrichment can produce both fuel for power plants and the fissile

core of nuclear warheads. Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended

only to produce energy, but there is growing international concern that it

could lead to the development of weapons.

Two of the diplomats spoke to the AP earlier this week and the third

Thursday. All are linked to the Vienna-based International Agency for Atomic

Energy, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, but asked for anonymity because their

information was confidential.

Their reports underlined Iran's determination to push ahead with its

enrichment program despite U.N. Security Council sanctions. One of the

diplomats said officials in Tehran would likely detail the new centrifuge

work on April 8, which Iran has designated National Nuclear Technology Day.

Preliminary assembly is only a first step in the complex enrichment process;

in comments to the AP earlier this year, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief

delegate to the IAEA, acknowledged that his country's uranium enrichment

program was experiencing "ups and downs." It appeared to be the first time

Iran admitted its enrichment activities were facing difficulties.

It was unclear whether the linkups of the more advanced centrifuges would

ever be used to churn out enriched uranium or whether they were only

experimental configurations.

"Something new is definitely going on," said former U.N. nuclear inspector

David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and

International Security tracks countries under nuclear suspicion.

Albright said that with information contradictory on the type of centrifuge,

it was difficult to speculate on the significance of the new work.

In comments to the AP earlier this week, the first diplomat said two linkups

or "cascades" of 176 centrifuges each had recently been assembled and a

third was in the process of being put together.

The workhorse of Iran's enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge which is

run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February

that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched

uranium at more than double the rate.

The February announcement was the first official confirmation by Tehran

after officials at the IAEA reported that Iran was using 10 of the new IR-2

centrifuges to produce small amounts of enriched material.

Ten centrifuges are too few to produce enriched uranium in the quantities

needed for an industrial-scale energy or weapons program and far below the

3,000 older P-1 centrifuges in Iran's underground enrichment plant in the

central town of Natanz.

Although a U.S. intelligence summary late last year concluded that Tehran

stopped working on direct nuclear weapons programs in 2003, enrichment is of

concern because it can produce weapons grade uranium for the core of

warheads.

The IAEA highlighted the "new-generation centrifuges" in its February report

on Iran but did not provide details on their operation.