DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran has begun construction at its Natanz nuclear facility, satellite images released Wednesday show, just as the U.N. nuclear agency acknowledged Tehran is building an underground advanced centrifuge assembly plant after its last one exploded in a reported sabotage attack last summer.
The
construction comes as the U.S. nears Election Day in a campaign pitting
President Donald Trump, whose maximum pressure campaign against Iran has led
Tehran to abandon all limits on its atomic program, and Joe Biden, who has
expressed a willingness to return to the accord. The outcome of the vote likely
will decide which approach America takes. Heightened tensions between Iran and
the U.S. nearly ignited a war at the start of the year.
Since
August, Iran has built a new or regraded road to the south of Natanz toward
what analysts believe is a former firing range for security forces at the
enrichment facility, images from San Francisco-based Planet Labs Inc. show.
A Planet
Labs satellite image Monday shows the site cleared away with what appears to be
construction equipment there, while an Oct. 21 image from Maxar Technologies
shows trucks, cars, backhoes and other vehicles at the cleared site.
Analysts
from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies say they believe the site is undergoing
excavation.
“That
road also goes into the mountains so it may be the fact that they’re digging
some kind of structure that’s going to be out in front and that there’s going
to be a tunnel in the mountains,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the
institute who studies Iran’s nuclear program. “Or maybe that they’re just going
to bury it there.”
Rafael
Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told
The Associated Press on Tuesday that his inspectors were aware of the
construction. He said Iran had previously informed IAEA inspectors, who
continue to have access to Iran’s sites despite the country having moved away
from many limits of its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, known as
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
“They
have started, but it’s not completed. It’s a long process,” Grossi said.
Alireza
Miryousefi, a spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, would
not comment on the satellite images or discuss specifics of the construction,
but said Iran was being transparent with its actions.
“Nothing
in Iran regarding its peaceful nuclear program is being done in secret, in full
keeping with the JCPOA, and as the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed,” Miryousefi
said in an email.
“This
instance is no different,” he said.
Ali
Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, last month
told state television the destroyed above-ground facility was being replaced
with one “in the heart of the mountains around Natanz.”
Trump in
2018 unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA deal Iran, in which Tehran
agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic
sanctions. When the U.S. ramped up sanctions, Iran gradually and publicly
abandoned those limits as a series of escalating incidents pushed the two
countries to the brink of war at the beginning of the year.
Iran now
enriches uranium to up to 4.5% purity, and according to the last IAEA report,
had a stockpile of 2,105 kilograms (2.32 tons). Experts typically say 1,050
kilograms (1.15 tons) of low-enriched uranium is enough material to be re-enriched
up to weapons-grade levels of 90% purity for one nuclear weapon.
Grossi
told The Associated Press, however, that the IAEA’s current estimate is that
Iran does not yet have enough to produce a weapon.
Iran’s
so-called “breakout time” — the time needed for it to build one nuclear weapon
if it chose to do so — is estimated now by outside experts to have dropped from
one year under the deal to as little as three months. Iran maintains its
nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, though Western countries fear Tehran
could use it to pursue atomic weapons.
Natanz,
built underground to harden it against airstrikes, long has been at the center
of those fears since its discovery in 2002. Centrifuges there still spin in
vast halls under 7.6 meters (25 feet) of concrete. Air defense positions
surround the facility in Iran’s central Isfahan province.
Despite
being one of the most-secure sites in Iran, Natanz was targeted by the Stuxnet
computer virus — believed to be the creation of the U.S. and Israel — before the
nuclear deal.
In July,
a fire and explosion struck its advanced centrifuge assembly facility in an
incident Iran later described as sabotage. Suspicion has fallen on Israel,
despite a claim of responsibility by a previously unheard-of group.
There
have been tensions with the IAEA and Iran even at Natanz, with Tehran accusing
one inspector of testing positive for explosives last year. However, so far
inspectors have been able to maintain their surveillance. something Lewis
described as very important.
“As long
as they declared to the IAEA in the proper time frame, there’s no prohibition
on putting things underground,” he said. “For me, the real red line would be if
the Iranians started to stonewall the IAEA.”
For now,
it remains unclear how deep Iran will put this new facility. And while the
sabotage will delay Iran in assembling new centrifuges, Lewis warned the
program ultimately would regroup as it had before and continue accumulating
ever-more material beyond the scope of the abandoned nuclear deal.
“We buy
ourselves a few months,” he said. “But what good is a few months if we don’t
know what we’re going to use it for?”
*Associated
Press writer David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.
***Jon
Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
**Photos:
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-dubai-iran-iran-nuclear-2f6574ec6585a928e1417c184dbf5f65