The Associated Press has reported that the United States is considering allowing Iran to continue to operate hundreds of centrifuges at Fordow, an underground nuclear complex outside of the city of Qom. The Iranians would reportedly be able to feed elements such as zinc, xenon, or germanium at the site, rather than uranium, which could be used for science or industry but not a nuclear weapon.
However, experts are concerned that the retained technology could easily be repurposed to enrich uranium. David Albright, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Institute for Science and International Studies, said that this concession “keeps the infrastructure in place and keeps a leg up, if they want to restart (uranium) enrichment operations,” Last week, the AP reported that American officials were fearful of that very fact. It is also of concern that the concession would be made at the Fordow site, located in a fortified mountainside, “making it resistant — possibly impervious — to air attack.”
In April 2012, the United States and European countries demanded that the Fordow site be dismantled as a condition for lifting sanctions. An Iranian official declared in February 2013, “Fordow will never be shut down because … our national duty is to be able to defend our nuclear and vital centres against an enemy threat.” The official went on to say that the demands to close the site were “meant to help the Zionist regime.” The Times of Israel and AP reported on March 16 that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had made “a sudden… demand that the Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep underground, be allowed to keep hundreds of centrifuges that are used for enriching uranium — material that can be used in a nuclear warhead.”
Last year, Iran’s insistence on keeping its enrichment infrastructure intact prompted commentator Fareed Zakaria to call Iran’s position a diplomatic “train wreck.”
In addition to the reported reversal on Fordow, the Western nations involved in the nuclear negotiations are considering backtracking on the demand that Iran come clean about its past nuclear research.
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