The growing threat of Iran’s nuclear program

„This week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Is expected to report new details on Iran’s efforts to design a nuclear device. This is worrying enough, but the true measure of Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons capability is the rate at which it is producing enriched uranium. By this measure, Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon and its nuclear enrichment program has not been slowed but, rather, continues to accelerate.

The last IAEA inspection report, issued in September, found almost 6,000 centrifuges spinning at Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz — more than ever before — and these centrifuges were enriching faster than ever. IAEA data indicate that in the first half of 2011, Iran was able to produce an average of almost 105 kilograms of low-enriched uranium per month. While this monthly rate fell slightly in August, even that was nearly twice Iran’s pre-Stuxnet production rate in 2009 — 56 kilograms per month — and 20 percent higher than its 2010 production rate of 86 kilograms per month. The trend line is clear.

Iran has produced more than 3,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and is accumulating more every day. Of course, Tehran would have to enrich this material further to have the highly enriched uranium necessary for a bomb. The fastest route for producing this material will require about 1,850 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to yield the roughly 20 kilograms of uranium enriched to 90 percent that is required for a bomb. Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium is already about 11 / 2 times that amount.

More troubling still has been Iran’s foray into progressively highly levels of uranium enrichment.”