Iran has brought online new uranium mines and a yellow cake production facility, deepening concerns that the country is diversifying and deepening its critical nuclear infrastructure with an eye toward developing a so-called “virtual arsenal.”

Tehran would under that scenario have the technology, material, and know-how to rush across the nuclear finish line once a political decision has been made to do so. Iranian media reports indicate that the Ardakan yellow cake facility is capable of annually producing 66 tons of yellow cake, while the Saghand 1 and 2 mines will allow Iran to extract uranium from depths of more than 1,100 feet. The openings were made as part of Iran’s National Nuclear Technology Day, which saw a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declaring that “Iran has gone nuclear”:

“They (world powers) tried their utmost to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but Iran has gone nuclear,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech at Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization on Tuesday.

“This nuclear technology and power and science has been institutionalized … All the stages are in our control and every day that we go forward a new horizon opens up before the Iranian nation.”

Iran’s moves come days after talks between the P5+1 and Iran – designed to reduce opacity around Iran’s nuclear program, which is widely believed to contain a clandestine weaponization component – ended with zero progress being made.

[Photo: Daniella Zalcman / Wiki Commons]