IAEA says Iran plans to 'significantly increase' enriched uranium production

By Global Watch and AFP | 2024-12-09

Iran plans a major increase in the production rate of highly enriched uranium, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said December 6 in a confidential report.

An updated design of Iran's Fordo plant showed that the effect of the change "would be to significantly increase the rate of production of uranium enriched up to 60 percent," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report said.

Production will jump to more than 34kg of highly enriched uranium per month, compared to 4.7kg previously, added the report to the IAEA's board of governors.

Uranium enriched to 60% brings it closer to the 90% needed to make a nuclear weapon.

Speaking to AFP in Bahrain, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Iran was sending a "clear message" after it was recently censured by the nuclear body's board of governors.

"This is a clear message that they are responding to what they feel is pressure," Grossi said on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue conference.

Vowing new centrifuges

Last month, Iran said it would launch "new and advanced" centrifuges in response to an IAEA resolution that censured Tehran for what the agency called lack of cooperation.

The censure motion brought by Britain, France, Germany, and the United States at the IAEA's 35-nation board follows a similar one in June.

In its report, the IAEA called on Iran to implement stepped-up inspections by the agency "as a matter of urgency."

Those will "enable the agency to provide timely and technically credible assurances that the facility is not being misused to produce uranium of an enrichment level higher than that declared by Iran, and that there is no diversion of declared nuclear material," it added.

Iran insists on its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and has consistently denied any ambition of developing weapon capability.

But according to the IAEA, it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state enriching uranium to 60% purity.

Intelligence chiefs last month said they saw Iranian nuclear ambitions as a global security threat.

"Iran's allied militias across the Middle East have suffered serious blows," Richard Moore, chief of Britain's MI6, said in a speech in Paris on November 29. "But the regime's nuclear ambitions continue to threaten all of us."