Iran plans to take initial step to enrichment: 5 N-bombs possible: expert
VIENNA, Sept 1: United Nations inspectors delivered a mixed report on Iran's nuclear activities on Wednesday that listed unanswered questions but contained no "smoking gun" confirming US allegations that Tehran is building a bomb.
The UN 's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report circulated to diplomats that Iran planned an industrial-scale test of a uranium conversion facility soon.
The IAEA said Iranian technicians had told its inspectors they planned to convert 37 tons of "yellow cake" uranium into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) - which one Western nuclear expert said could in theory be enough to build five atomic bombs.
US Under secretary of State John Bolton said that Washington viewed Tehran's plans to process 37 tons of raw "yellow cake" uranium "with great concern" and said Iran was a threat to global peace.
"Iran's announcements are further strong evidence of the compelling need to take Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council," the hawkish Bolton said in a statement to Reuters. The UN Security Council can impose economic sanctions.
Iran insists the only purpose of its nuclear programme is the peaceful generation of electricity. It denies having done any uranium enrichment close to the level needed to fuel a power plant, let alone weapons.
The UN agency said it "continues to make steady progress in understanding the (Iranian nuclear) programme", though its investigation is not complete. "It is a work in progress," a senior Western diplomat said of the investigation, adding that the IAEA's sixth such report on Iran was "a mixed bag".
The unresolved issues include enriched-uranium particles found in Iran, work on advanced P-2 centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium, and suspected Iranian attempts to buy equipment with both military and civilian nuclear applications.
The report will be discussed at a meeting of IAEA Board of Governors this month, when Washington is expected to renew its call for the board to report Tehran to the UN Security Council for violating its non-proliferation obligations. However, diplomats at the UN say Washington has few supporters.
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and currently president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said Iran's uranium conversion test could lead to the production of 100kgs of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium.
Speaking purely hypothetically, Albright said that if the UF6 was later enriched sufficiently, "it's roughly enough for about five crude nuclear weapons of the type Iran could conceivably build."
He said he was surprised at the many unresolved issues in Iran, adding that it was "difficult to keep track of them all". But he said Washington could not point to the report as proof of an Iranian weapons programme. "There's nothing in this report that says 'Gotcha Iran!', no smoking gun," he said.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman acknowledged that the IAEA report left some questions unanswered but said they were insignificant. The IAEA praised Iran for providing it with access to sites inside the country and with some information, but chided it for being late with the provision of other information.
"In (some) cases, sufficiently detailed information has been so late that it has not been possible to include an assessment of its sufficiency and correctness in this report," it said.
The agency said it had received information about Iran's laser uranium enrichment programme and uranium conversion experiments to end its special probes of those issues. -Reuters
