Iran has stopped expanding enrichment, say diplomats

By Steve Hynd

Reuters has an interesting report today from diplomats at the IAEA in Vienna:

Iran has effectively stopped expanding active uranium enrichment since September, diplomats said, while considering a big power offer to fuel a medical reactor if it turns over enriched material seen as an atomic bomb risk.

While Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) has likely risen by 200-300 kg from 1,500 kg reported by U.N. monitors in August, the number of operating centrifuge machines at its Natanz enrichment plant has remained at about 4,600, they said.

Iran's potential enrichment capacity was much higher. It had installed at least 8,700 centrifuges in all by late September, diplomats said. A fresh figure was not yet available.

But it was unclear why almost half the centrifuges were not yet enriching, remaining idle or undergoing vacuum tests.

Diplomats and analysts said possible reasons ranged from technical glitches to politically motivated restraint, to avoid closing the door to diplomacy with world powers and provoking harsher international sanctions or even Israeli military action.

The last time there was a chance of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, back in 2007, Iran likewise slowed expansion of its enrichment facilities. Unfortunately, the Bush administration went along with the usual neocon and Israeli pressure and restricted those talks to matters dealing with Iraq, thus aborting a great chance of opening a wider dialogue.

Hopefully, the Obama administration won't be so fast to close of avenues, despite the same-old pressure from the same-old suspects to to do. Reuters also reports that Iran and Turkey have been having talks on one possible solution to the impasse over the IAEA's Draft Deal - holding Iran's LEU "in escrow" in Turkey rather than simply sending it to Russia or France, two nations which Iran has good reasons to view as unreliable partners.