VIENNA — Defying the international community, Iran has sharply
upgraded its capacity to enrich uranium in recent months while the
outside world's access to and grasp of Tehran's nuclear program
"has deteriorated," according to an unusually blunt report
Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As two U.S. aircraft carriers and a flotilla of warships steamed
into the Persian Gulf for previously unannounced exercises off
Iranian shores, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency warned
that it could not "provide assurances about … the exclusively
peaceful nature" of Tehran's expanding nuclear effort.
Iran has
started low-level operation of 1,312 centrifuges, which are used
to enrich uranium, and has begun testing or is constructing 820
additional centrifuges, in a vast underground chamber at the
country's main nuclear facility at Natanz, the report by the
Vienna-based IAEA said. The total is more than three times as many
centrifuges as Iran had at the facility three months ago.
"What they are doing now is significant," said a senior U.N.
official who spoke on condition that he not be identified because
the report officially goes to the U.N. Security Council before it
may be released. "Their progress is accelerating."
Iran's continued refusal to comply with Security Council demands
for an immediate freeze of its nuclear program is likely to spur
another round of U.N. economic sanctions, the third set since
December. U.S. diplomats and their allies began preparing
proposals for stiffer penalties this month in anticipation of a
negative report.
Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, disputed
portions of the report and said in a telephone interview that
Tehran had provided "full cooperation and full transparency" to
the U.N. inspectors.
As Iranian officials have in the past, Soltanieh insisted that
Tehran's nuclear program would produce only electricity, not, as
the West fears, nuclear weapons.
The centrifuges can be used to provide low enriched fuel for
civilian reactors, or they can produce the more highly enriched
uranium used for nuclear weapons.
"We have continued our activities because this is our inalienable
right," the Iranian envoy said. Additional U.N. sanctions, he
warned, would "have a negative consequence." He declined to
elaborate.
The Bush administration, which has sought to rein in Iran's
nuclear program through diplomacy and sanctions, reacted sharply
to the latest IAEA report.
"Iran is thumbing its nose at the international community,"
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns told reporters in
Washington. "We are not going to agree to accept limited
enrichment, to accept that 1,300 centrifuges can continue spinning
at their plant at Natanz."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said
in New York that "the time has come to take a look at additional
pressure, to ratchet up the pressure to bring about a change in
Iranian calculations."
Khalilzad said the U.S. was willing to negotiate directly with
Iran to safeguard a civilian nuclear program once Tehran suspended
its current enrichment effort, as the Security Council has
demanded. Iran has insisted it will not freeze its operations as a
precondition for talks.
Khalilzad dealt directly with Iranian counterparts in recent years
when he served as ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, but not on
the nuclear issue. He said he did not have instructions to talk
informally with the Iranian ambassador to the U.N., Javad Zarif,
his partner in previous talks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy began the major, previously unscheduled
exercise in the Persian Gulf — one of the largest shows of
military force in the region's seas since the 2003 American-led
invasion of Iraq.
Navy officials said the air and sea maneuvers were not designed to
increase diplomatic pressure on Iran. They said the training
mission was being conducted because three battle groups happened
to be nearby at the same time.
"It's not a chest-thumping thing," an official said. "It's a
target of opportunity."
The Pentagon this year decided to send a second aircraft carrier
group to the gulf as part of what senior Defense Department
officials acknowledged was an attempt to show that the U.S. could
project force in the Middle East even as it was bogged down in
Iraq. The two carrier groups currently in the gulf are led by the
John C. Stennis and the Nimitz.
The arrival of the third battle group, a flotilla that includes an
attack submarine and five large surface ships led by the
amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, on Wednesday prompted
the commander of the Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, to begin
the joint exercise, officials said.
The drill will include mine warfare maneuvers. Iran is believed to
be developing the capability to mine portions of the gulf in the
event of war, and any mining or military action could cause a
sharp spike in the price of oil and affect the global economy.