A Glimpse at Iran's Nuclear Sites

March 30, 2005 — -- Iran today allowed reporters a rare glimpse inside its nuclear facility at Natanz, home to Iran's centrifuge uranium-enrichment program.

According to wire reports, no centrifuges were visible during the three-hour tour, which was conducted by Iran's President Mohammad Khatami himself.

Iran maintains a pilot-scale fuel enrichment plant at Natanz, consisting of 164 centrifuges, and has plans to construct a much larger cascade of more than 50,000 machines that would produce uranium fuel for nuclear reactors.

Centrifuges enrich uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors that produce electricity. But the process can also make material for use in nuclear warheads.

For now, Natanz's centrifuges remain silent while France, Britain and Germany negotiate the terms of what they hope will be a permanent suspension of Iran's enrichment program.

Today's visit to the 1,100-acre complex, located about 150 miles south of Tehran, was intended to demonstrate Iran's commitment to enriching fuel only for nuclear power and the high-level monitoring of Iran's facilities remains under the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Skeptics note that the fuel for Iran's almost-completed reactor at Bushehr will be provided by Russia, and that an indigenous fuel-production capability makes little economic sense.

"Iran wants to present their uranium program as a fait accompli and is trying to tell the rest of the world to get used to it," said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The fact that it makes no economic sense and that Iran has no reactor that can use the material is irrelevant for Iran's leaders, who view the program as a nuclear insurance policy and a point of national pride."

A State Department spokesman said the "staged media visit" to Natanz would do nothing to ease international concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"If Iran were really serious about allaying the concerns of the international community, they would stop denying IAEA full and unrestricted access to suspicious sites," said spokesman Adam Ereli. "They would stop refusing IAEA requests to interview key officials associated with Iran's nuclear facilities. They would tell the truth about the history of their advance P-2 centrifuge program."