US fears faster Iran nuclear arms progress

US officials are worried Iran could use new technology in coming months that would shorten the time needed to reach nuclear weapon status and reduce the scope for diplomacy.

Washington is particularly concerned that Tehran might deploy a new generation of centrifuges to enrich uranium, a process that can yield nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material.

Since such devices are three times faster than the centrifuges Iran relies on now, officials say they would reduce the “dash time” needed to develop a nuclear weapon.

“If they were to deploy large numbers of these second-generation machines then it could dramatically reduce dash time,” said an administration official.

The US would look at the next quarterly report of the UN nuclear watchdog to see if Iran was making progress with the new centrifuges, he said.

The previous such report, in November, indicated Iran planned to deploy several hundred new centrifuges for “research and development” at its once-secret nuclear site near Qom.

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David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) in Washington said: “The next crisis will probably be over the question of deployment of these advanced centrifuges.”

Iran has been working for years to build a new generation of centrifuges. But they have yet to be deployed in significant numbers in spite of announcements by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, that the effort had succeeded.

The Obama administration says it would take Iran one to two years between reaching a decision to make a bomb and producing enough highly enriched uranium for one weapon. That would leave plenty of time for detection by UN inspectors – unless the centrifuges are at a secret site.

Some outside commentators say far less time would be needed – about six months, according to Isis. Iran says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful.

Commentators agree the calculations would change greatly if Iran deployed more efficient centrifuges.

Iran relies on a form of the so-called P1 centrifuge, technology it acquired from Pakistan’s disbanded A.Q. Khan nuclear black market ring, which was modelled on 1970s Dutch equipment.

“The P1 is not going to get much better,” said the administration official. “It’s just a very temperamental machine. If anything goes off kilter, it tends to crash.”

Iran’s programme has also been beset by apparent sabotage by the US and its allies, assassinations of key scientists, and the Stuxnet computer virus, which Mr Ahmadi-Nejad admitted had hit operations at Iran’s main enrichment plant in Natanz.

For unknown reasons, Iran keeps about half its approximately 8,500 centrifuges at Natanz idle. The US official said this was probably so that machines on standby could be used when centrifuges in operation broke down.

Mr Albright said it was a “perplexing question” why Iran had not developed and deployed better centrifuges to date, suggesting it was constrained by a lack of raw materials and components. Other experts suggest Tehran has problems mastering the technology because of its limited technical and industrial base.

Iran is experimenting on about 40 new-generation centrifuges at Natanz.

Mr Albright believed Iran was proceeding in a “slow, deliberate” fashion with its nuclear programme rather than embarking on a nuclear dash – including high levels of uranium enrichment – that could provoke a military strike.

The US official said Iran had sought consistently to develop its nuclear programme at secret sites. “That’s the most logical way for them to do it with the lowest risk, and also the advantage of a covert facility is that you don’t need to be hasty,” he added.

He added that it would take three to six months to reconfigure centrifuges from producing nuclear fuel to yielding weapons grade material, a process Iranian authorities would want to keep away from inspectors’ eyes.

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