Iran's nuclear gambit - the basics

Further reports, denied by Tehran, emerged from diplomats at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna in early March, suggesting that Iran has covert plans to arm the Shahab-3 with a nuclear warhead. News reports from Germany last December suggest that Iran may have purchased 18 BM-25 disassembled missiles, which have a range of 1,550 miles, from North Korea.

Rumors and news reports hint at a longer range missile on the drawing board. Iranian military officials claimed last month to have successfully test-fired a short-range radar-avoiding antiaircraft missile and a new high-speed torpedo.

The success of Iran's nuclear program hinges upon its use of centrifuges. They are machines that literally "spin" uranium into an enriched form, to be used either for nuclear fuel to produce power, or, at a much higher level, to make atomic bombs.

As US-led diplomatic pressure grew to report Iran to the UN Security Council, last January Iran removed IAEA seals in the presence of international nuclear inspectors and resumed work.

Iran announced last week that it had enriched uranium to 4.8 percent U-235. That is the top end of the scale needed to power a nuclear reactor, but far from the 80 to 90 percent required for a weapon. Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said that "enrichment above 5 percent is not on Iran's agenda."

Iranian scientists are using a test "cascade" of 164 centrifuges, are building two more similar sized cascades, and plan to install 3,000 centrifuges by the end of this year - a number that could produce enough nuclear material in a year, by one count, for a single bomb.

Iran has told the IAEA of plans for 54,000 centrifuges at the underground site at Natanz, though the ISIS estimates that Iran has quality components for 1,700 to 2,700 centrifuge assemblies.

As a signatory to the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is obligated to declare all its nuclear facilities and use of nuclear material, and to keep them under IAEA safeguard. Iran is also permitted, under the NPT, to pursue nuclear energy programs, and uranium enrichment for that purpose. The same treaty also obligates signatories with nuclear weapons, including the US, to move toward total disarmament.

Iran has stated repeatedly that it has no intention of going beyond nuclear energy, but in 2002 an Iranian opposition group living in exile - reportedly tipped off by Israeli intelligence - revealed the undeclared enrichment site at Natanz and work on a heavy-water research reactor at Arak.

Iran was found to have kept those and other key aspects of its nuclear program secret for nearly two decades. It is also known to have had dealings with the proliferation network of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, who sold nuclear blueprints to Libya and other clients around the world.

To increase confidence in its peaceful intentions, and show goodwill, Iran voluntarily suspended enrichment. Until Feb. 5, Iran largely acted as though it had ratified the Additional Protocol of the NPT, which provides for intrusive inspections.

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