Last week, 100 Iranian legislatures drafted a proposal calling for further uranium enrichment. In a surprise move, Iran has also announced this week that it is designing a new type of centrifuge to help further its enrichment efforts. The Tasnim news agency quotes Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi as saying “A new generation of centrifuges is being built, but they should undergo all tests before mass production.”
The deal reached in November between Iran and the P5+1 (United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia) stipulates that Iran is forbidden from operating centrifuges for a period of six months. However, the agreement failed to state that Iran is not allowed to develop new centrifuges. Salehi numbered Iran’s current working centrifuges at 19,000. According to the deal, Iran must hold back from installing any new centrifuges and is limited to enrich uranium to levels up to 20 percent.
The centrifuge is a key component in uranium enrichment. After uranium is turned into a gaseous form, a centrifuge takes the gas and spins it with a force thousands of times stronger than gravity. This forces U-235 atoms, the atoms necessary for eventually creating a nuclear bomb, to separate and leaves you with a highly concentrated, highly enriched form of the U-235 atom. In uranium enrichment plants, thousands of centrifuges are linked together, helping to enrich uranium to the desired level of 90 percent.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told Fox News that the “Iranians are showing their true intentions.” The Israeli Embassy in Washington responded to Iran’s plans by calling once again on Iran to stop their enrichment process. The statement said “Installing additional advanced centrifuges would be further indication that Iran intends to develop a nuclear bomb – and to speed up the process of achieving it.”
The Obama administration is pursuing avenues of diplomacy when it comes to Iran and its nuclear ambitions. As the P5+1 and Iran get set to launch into further discussion and iron out the details of the nuclear agreement, the world waits to see if peaceful avenues of negotiation can stop Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb.
