Iran's nuclear plans `in chaos'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, left, visit the Natanz uranium enrichment facilities 322km south of Tehran, Feb. 15, 2006. Iran has started to install 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium under its disputed nuclear program, a senior parliamentary official said Saturday. PHOTO: AFP

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.

Iran's uranium enrichment program has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non- proliferation and regional and world peace -- in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US -- a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian program have said that it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.

The disclosures come as Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that it plans to install a new "cascade" of 3,000 high-speed centrifuges at its controversial underground facility at Natanz in central Iran next month.

The centrifuges were supposed to have been installed almost a year ago and many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the "installation" will more probably be about propaganda than reality.

The detailed descriptions of Iran's problems in enriching more than a few grams of uranium using high-speed centrifuges -- 50kg is required for two nuclear devices -- comes in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture being painted of Iran's imminent acquisition of a nuclear weapon with which to attack Israel. Instead, say experts, the break-up of the nuclear smuggling organization of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadheer Khan has massively set back an Iran heavily dependent on his network.

A key case in point is that Tehran originally procured the extremely high-quality bearings required for the centrifuges' carbon-fibre "top rotors" -- spinning dishes within the machines -- from foreign companies in Malaysia.

With that source closed down two years ago, Iran is making the bearings itself with only limited success. It is the repeated failure of these crucial bearings, say some sources, that has been one of the program's biggest setbacks.

Yet some involved in the increasingly aggressive standoff over Iran fear tensions will reach snapping point between March and June this year, with a likely scenario being Israeli air strikes on symbolic Iranian nuclear plants.

The sense of imminent crisis has been driven by statements from Israel, not least from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has insisted that this year is a make-or-break time over Iran's nuclear program.

The escalating sense of crisis is being driven by two imminent events, the "installation" of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanzand and the scheduled delivery of fuel from Russia for Iran's Busheyr civil nuclear reactor, due to start up this autumn. Both are regarded as potential trigger points for an Israeli attack.

"The reality is that they have got to the stage where they can run a small experimental centrifuge cascade intermittently," said one Western source familiar with the Iranian program. "They simply have not got to the stage where they can run 3,000 centrifuges. There is no evidence either that they have been stockpiling low-enriched uranium which could be highly enriched quickly and which would give an idea of a malevolent intent," he said.