Iran says it will open secret new enrichment site after historic UN atomic agency censure

Tehran’s move casts shadow over nuclear talks while Donald Trump says an Israeli strike ‘could very well happen’ but urges Israel not to attack.

A sixth round of nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran was expected on Sunday.

Iran said Thursday it would soon open a third uranium enrichment site, while President Trump said that an Israeli strike on the country “could very well happen.”

Iran’s announcement about the enrichment site came after the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency decided for the first time in two decades that Tehran had failed to comply with its nonproliferation obligations.

The US is set to hold its sixth round of nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran on Sunday. Trump is trying to persuade Tehran to stop producing fissile material as part of a new nuclear deal.

Trump said earlier this week that he had grown less confident about striking a deal with Tehran, but in remarks to reporters on Thursday said that he thought an agreement was “fairly close.”

“I would love to avoid a conflict,” he said. “They’re going to have to be willing to give us some things that they’re not willing to give us right now.”

But he warned Israel against attacking Iran. “I don’t want them going in, because I think it would blow it,” he said.

The president has said he could take military action against Iran if nuclear talks fail. Israel has long warned it would strike Iran’s sites if it believed Tehran was starting to build a nuclear weapon, something Tehran claims it has never sought to do.

Asked if an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent, Trump replied on Thursday: “I don’t want to say it’s imminent but it looks like something that could very well happen.”

The head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, said Tehran would accelerate its production of near-weapons-grade uranium and open a previously unrevealed enrichment site in what he said is a secure location, according to Iranian state media.

Eslami said Iran was starting the process of readying and installing centrifuges in the new site and would start producing fissile material there as soon as it was ready. That would suggest Iran has been working on the site in secret for some time.

He said Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency about its plans immediately after Thursday morning’s vote. The IAEA didn’t immediately comment.

Iran currently has two main enrichment sites. One is underground, at Natanz, while another is built deep into a mountainside, near the holy city of Qom, at Fordow. Iran kept the construction of Fordow secret for years before it was revealed by Western officials in 2009. Both are built in a way to protect them from strikes by Israel or the US.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran has in the past made claims about its planned nuclear work that haven’t come to fruition. The country is also heavily monitored by foreign intelligence agencies, which have frequently picked up Iranian nuclear work the country sought to keep secret.

Under IAEA rules, Iran is supposed to give the agency advance notice of any plans to build nuclear sites, but Tehran has refused to abide by those obligations for several years, citing the collapse of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. The IAEA and Western member states have repeatedly urged Iran to resume compliance, saying the issue is unrelated to the 2015 agreement.

Iran has rapidly escalated its production of fissile material in the past six months and is producing around one nuclear weapon’s worth of 60% highly enriched uranium a month, principally at Fordow. As part of Thursday’s announcement, Iran said it would further increase its production of highly enriched uranium at Fordow by replacing basic centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium with more advanced, faster ones.

The addition of a third enrichment site would give Iran greater latitude to speed up its nuclear program. Iran already has enough highly enriched uranium to make around 10 nuclear weapons, according to IAEA data.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for 19 nuclear weapons within three months, allowing it to start to build a real nuclear arsenal.

Eslami provided no details of the new site. There have long been concerns in Israel and the US that Tehran was planning to place a new enrichment facility deep underground at its Natanz site, where it has carried out several years of construction work on a tunnel complex. Such a location could be very hard to strike.

Albright said that Iran could be nearing completion of its work on the underground complex and that the location could hold a small enrichment site.

Iran’s announcements came after Iran was declared to be in noncompliance with IAEA safeguard rules for the first time in 20 years. The IAEA board of member states passed a noncompliance resolution by 19-3. The resolution was pushed by the US and European powers. Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against it, diplomats said.

The vote was called over Iran’s repeated refusal over the past six years to explain the presence of undeclared nuclear material in Iran.

Last month, the IAEA warned it couldn’t say with certainty that Iran hadn’t diverted undeclared nuclear material—potentially for a military purpose—that was found in the country after 2018, when the US pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Picture: AFP

The US says it has no evidence Iran has decided to develop a nuclear weapon, but US officials say it could take Iran just a few months. US intelligence officials said last year that it was becoming more likely Iran might decide to build a bomb and that Tehran was conducting work that could help it do so.

The IAEA vote opens the way for Iran’s nuclear work to be referred to the UN Security Council for action. European diplomats, who pushed the resolution alongside Washington, say that unless Iran reverses course, they would later this year reimpose the international sanctions lifted on Iran under the 2015 deal.

Iran has said that if sanctions are snapped back, it could kick out inspectors and leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obliges participants not to develop nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Oslo, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the IAEA board decision will make Sunday’s nuclear talks in Oman harder.

“Of course, this meeting will take place in the context of a new resolution that has been adopted by IAEA, which adds to the complexity of the discussions,” he said. “However, we will be in Muscat to defend the rights of the Iranian nation…and to defend the nuclear achievements of Iranian scientists.”

The vote comes as the US moves to draw down its presence in parts of the Middle East to essential personnel, the State Department and Pentagon said Wednesday.

Experts and former officials say that Israel could try to defuse what it sees as the threat to its security of a nuclear-armed Iran if the deal talks are stymied. Trump said recently that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against taking action—such as a military strike—that could threaten the talks with Iran.

Iran has warned that it would respond to any attack by hitting US bases in the region.

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Aziz Nasirzadeh said Wednesday that if “a conflict is imposed on us…all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

The US-Iran nuclear talks have stumbled over a fundamental divide between the two sides. Trump has said he wants a deal that ends Iran’s enrichment of fissile material, saying that is the only way to ensure Tehran can’t develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has made continuing enrichment its core red line over two decades of nuclear negotiations.

Wall Street Journal