Word: natanz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only surprise about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement Monday that Iran has moved to "industrial-scale" uranium enrichment is the timing. Back in January, Iranian officials informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it was installing 3,000 centrifuges at its underground enrichment facility at Natanz, and would soon begin feeding uranium gas into them. Ahmadinejad had been expected to boast of this expansion from a 328-centrifuge pilot operation last Feb. 11, as Iran celebrated the 28th anniversary of its revolution...
...addition, Israel can't muster the firepower that the U.S. has, so its jets could likely handle only a limited number of targets - perhaps the soon-to-be-operating Bushehr reactor on Iran's Persian Gulf coast and the fuel enrichment plants at Natanz south of Tehran. That means the raid could only hope to set Iran's nuclear program back for several years...
...defined period - there would be no industrial-scale uranium enrichment on its own soil; the fuel for its nuclear reactors would be produced abroad and shipped back when spent. But Iran may hold out for a deal that allows it to maintain its 164-centrifuge enrichment cascade at Natanz for research purposes, under additional supervision if necessary. That cascade is too small to create bomb material, but the U.S. and its allies believe even research-scale enrichment would provide critical know-how and could also camouflage any covert bomb program. The issue of that research facility...
...abrogate its right, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium. Tehran has signaled a flexibility on time frames, and also a willingness to consider importing its reactor fuel if it is allowed to maintain the small-scale uranium enrichment research facility it is currently operating at Natanz, albeit under closer international supervision. The U.S., Britain and France have rejected that possibility on the grounds that any enrichment activity gives Iran critical know-how for bomb production...
...from Iran showed that they may have been trying to conceptualize how to adapt one of their missiles to a nuclear weapon. It is cause for concern. Certainly, we know where the key installations are, the ones that have been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency--Isfahan and Natanz. Are there others that we're not aware of at all? You don't know what you don't know...