VIENNA: Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog found uranium particles enriched up to 83.7 percent in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site, a report seen Tuesday by The Associated Press said.
The confidential quarterly report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency distributed to member states likely will raise tensions further between Iran and the West over its nuclear program. That’s even as Tehran already faces internal unrest after months of protests and Western anger over sending bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war on Ukraine.
The IAEA report only speaks about “particles,” suggesting that Iran isn’t building a stockpile of uranium enriched above 60 percent — the level it has been enriching at for some time.
The IAEA report described inspectors discovering on Jan. 21 that two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges at Iran’s Fordo facility had been configured in a way “substantially different” to what had been previously declared. The IAEA took samples the following day, which showed particles up to 83.7 percent purity, the report said.
“Iran informed the agency that ‘unintended fluctuations’ in enrichment levels may have occurred during the transition period,” the IAEA report said. “Discussions between the agency and Iran to clarify the matter are ongoing.”
The IAEA report also said that it would “further increase the frequency and intensity of agency verification activities” at Fordo after the discovery.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations told the AP that Massimo Aparo, a top IAEA official, visited the Islamic Republic last week “and checked the alleged enrichment rate.”
“Based on Iran’s assessment, the alleged enrichment percentage between Iran and the IAEA is resolved,” the mission contended. “Due to the IAEA report being prepared before his trip, his trip’s results aren’t in it and hopefully the IAEA director-general will mention it in his oral report to the board of governors” in March.
A spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, Behrouz Kamalvandi, also sought last week to portray any detection of uranium particles enriched to that level as a momentary side effect of trying to reach a finished product of 60 percent purity. However, experts say such a great variance in the purity even at the atomic level would appear suspicious to inspectors.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal limited Tehran’s uranium stockpile to 300 kilograms (661 pounds) and enrichment to 3.67 percent — enough to fuel a nuclear power plant. The US’ unilateral withdraw from the accord in 2018 set in motion a series of attacks and escalations by Tehran over its program.
Iran has been producing uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — a level for which nonproliferation experts already say Tehran has no civilian use. The IAEA report put Iran’s uranium stockpile as of Feb. 12 at some 3,760 kilogram (8,289 pounds) — an increase of 87.1 kilograms (192 pounds) since its last quarterly report in November. Of that, 87.5 kilograms (192 pounds) is enriched up to 60 percent purity.
Uranium at nearly 84 percent is almost at weapons-grade levels of 90 percent — meaning any stockpile of that material could be quickly used to produce an atomic bomb if Iran chooses.
While the IAEA’s director-general has warned Iran now has enough uranium to produce “several” bombs, months more would likely be needed to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile. The US intelligence community, as recently as this past weekend, has maintained its assessment that Iran isn’t pursuing an atomic bomb.
“To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003,” CIA Director Williams Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “But the other two legs of the stool, meaning enrichment programs, they’ve obviously advanced very far.”
But Fordo, which sits under a mountain near the holy Shiite city of Qom, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tehran, remains a special concern for the international community. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead US officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.
Meanwhile, a top Defense Department official told the US House of Representative’s Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that Iran could make enough fissile material for one nuclear weapons in under two weeks if Tehran choose to pursue it.
“Iran’s nuclear progress since we left the (deal) has been remarkable,” Colin Kahl said. “Back in 2018, when the previous administration decided to leave the (deal), it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one bomb’s worth of fissile material. Now it would take about 12 days.”
Any explanation from Iran, however, likely won’t be enough to satisfy Israel, Iran’s regional archrival. Already, Israel’s recently reinstalled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened military actions against Tehran. And Israel and Iran have been engaged in a high-stakes shadow war across the wider Middle East since the nuclear deal’s collapse.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Germany’s foreign minister said both her country and Israel are worried about the allegations facing Iran over the nearly 84 percent enriched uranium.
“We are united by concern about the nuclear escalation on Iran’s part and about the recent reports about the very high uranium enrichment,” Annalena Baerbock said. “There is no plausible civilian justification for such a high enrichment level.”
Speaking in Berlin, Israel’s visiting foreign minister, Eli Cohen, pointed to two options to deal with Iran — using a so-called “snapback” mechanism in the Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal to reimpose UN sanctions, and “to have a credible military option on the table as well.”
“From our intelligence and from our knowledge, this is the right time to work on these two specific steps,” he said.
Uranium particles enriched to 83.7% found in Iran: UN
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Uranium particles enriched to 83.7% found in Iran: UN
- Report likely will renew tensions between Iran and the West over its program
Trump lands in Abu Dhabi on last leg of Gulf tour
ABU DHABI: US President Donald Trump arrived Thursday in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates' capital, on the final stop of his multi-day Gulf tour, AFP journalists on Air Force One said.
After visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, Trump is hoping to secure billions of dollars in business deals with the UAE that seeks to become an artificial intelligence hub.
Drones drag Sudan war into dangerous new territory
- RSF has sought to demonstrate its strength, discredit the army and disrupt its supply lines
- Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair said “this is intended to undermine the army’s ability to provide safety and security in areas they control“
CAIRO: Paramilitary drone strikes targeting Sudan’s wartime capital have sought to shatter the regular army’s sense of security and open a dangerous new chapter in the war, experts say.
Since April 2023, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group has been at war with the army, which has recently recaptured some territory and dislodged the paramilitaries from the capital Khartoum.
The latter appeared to have the upper hand before Sunday, when drone strikes began blasting key infrastructure in Port Sudan, seat of the army-backed government on the Red Sea coast.
With daily strikes on the city since then, the RSF has sought to demonstrate its strength, discredit the army, disrupt its supply lines and project an air of legitimacy, experts believe.
According to Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair, “this is intended to undermine the army’s ability to provide safety and security in areas they control,” allowing the RSF to expand the war “without physically being there.”
For two years, the paramilitaries relied mainly on lightning ground offensives, overwhelming army defenses in brutal campaigns of conquest.
But after losing nearly all of Khartoum in March, the RSF has increasingly turned to long-range air power.
RSF has hit strategic sites hundreds of kilometers (miles) away from their holdout positions on the capital’s outskirts.
Michael Jones, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, says the RSF’s pivot is a matter of both “strategic adaptation” and “if not desperation, then necessity.”
“The loss of Khartoum was both a strategic and symbolic setback,” he told AFP.
In response, the RSF needed to broadcast a “message that the war isn’t over,” according to Sudanese analyst Hamid Khalafallah.
The conflict between Sudan’s de facto leader, army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has split Africa’s third-largest country in two.
The army holds the center, north and east, while the RSF controls nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
“It’s unlikely that the RSF can retake Khartoum or reach Port Sudan by land, but drones enable them to create a sense of fear and destabilize cities” formerly considered safe, Khalafallah told AFP.
With drones and loitering munitions, it can “reach areas it hasn’t previously infiltrated successfully,” Jones said.
According to a retired Sudanese general, the RSF has been known to use two types of drone — makeshift lightweight models with 120mm mortar rounds that explode on impact, and long-range drones capable of delivering guided missiles, including the Chinese-manufactured CH95.
According to Mohaned Elnour, nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the RSF’s “main objective is to divert the army’s attention” and position itself as a potential government, which it has said it will form.
“It’s much easier for them to attack quickly and withdraw, rather than defend territory,” Elnour said.
Crossing Sudan’s vast landmass — some 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from RSF bases in Darfur to Port Sudan — requires long-range drones such as the Chinese-made Wing Loong II, or the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 used by the army, according to Amnesty.
Both sides in Sudan are in a race to “destroy each other’s drone capacity,” Khair said.
Two years into the devastating war, the RSF has another incentive to rely on drones, she said.
“It allows them to spare their troops” after reports that RSF recruitment has dipped since the war began.
“Initial recruitment was high based on the opportunity to loot, and there’s very little left to loot now,” she said.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians, but the RSF is specifically accused of rampant looting, ethnic cleansing and systematic sexual violence.
Lufthansa group suspends Tel Aviv flights following Houthi attacks on Israel
- Airline group Lufthansa will suspend its flights to Tel Aviv through May 25
BERLIN: Airline group Lufthansa will suspend its flights to Tel Aviv through May 25, it said on Thursday, citing the “current situation.”
This affects flights operated by Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, ITA Airways, Brussels Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo, it added.
Global airlines have again halted their flights to and from Tel Aviv after a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis toward Israel on May 4 landed near the country’s main international airport in Tel Aviv.
Jordan evacuates second group of cancer patients from Gaza
AMMAN: Jordan’s government on Wednesday began evacuating four child cancer patients and 12 family members from Gaza.
They are the second group of patients evacuated for treatment under the Jordan Medical Corridor initiative, started in March this year, that aims to treat 2,000 Gazan children.
The children and their families were evacuated by the Royal Jordanian Air Force in cooperation with the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health.
They will be treated at the King Hussein Cancer Center.
The first evacuees were 29 children and 44 family members. Seventeen of these children have since returned to Gaza with their families after completing their treatment.
Trump says US close to a nuclear deal with Iran
- Trump says the US is in serious negotiations with Iran to reach a long-term peace
DUBAI: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms.
“We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said on a tour of the Gulf, according to a shared pool report by AFP.
“We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this... there (are) two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way,” he said.
An Iranian source familiar with the negotiations said there were still gaps to bridge in the talks with the United States.
Fresh talks between Iranian and US negotiators to resolve disputes over Tehran’s nuclear program ended in Oman on Sunday with further negotiations planned, officials said, as Tehran publicly insisted on continuing its uranium enrichment.
Though Tehran and Washington have both said they prefer diplomacy to resolve the decades-long nuclear dispute, they remain divided on several red lines that negotiators will have to circumvent to reach a new deal and avert future military action.
Iran’s president reacted to Trump’s comments on Tuesday calling Tehran the “most destructive force” in the Middle East.
“Trump thinks he can sanction and threaten us and then talk of human rights. All the crimes and regional instability is caused by them (the United States),” Masoud Pezeshkian said.
“He wants to create instability inside Iran.”
US officials have publicly stated that Iran should halt uranium enrichment, a stance Iranian officials have called a “red line” asserting they will not give up what they view as their right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil.
However, they have indicated a willingness to reduce the level of enrichment.
Iranian officials have also expressed readiness to reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium in storage— uranium enriched beyond the levels typically needed for civilian purposes, such as nuclear power generation.
However, they have said it would not accept lower stockpiles than the amount agreed in a deal with world powers in 2015 — the deal Trump quit.
The Iranian source said that while Iran is prepared to offer what it considers concessions, “the issue is that America is not willing to lift major sanctions in exchange.”
Western sanctions have severely impacted the Iranian economy.
Regarding the reduction of enriched uranium in storage, the source noted: “Tehran also wants it removed in several stages, which America doesn’t agree with either.”
There is also disagreement over the destination to which the highly enriched uranium would be sent, the source added.
