"It really crept up on us," said an official based at the IAEA's Vienna
headquarters.
Iran Seen Trying New Path to a Bomb U.S., European Officials Say Tehran
Could Start Making Weapons-Grade Plutonium by Next Summer
By JAY SOLOMON Updated August 5, 2013, 6:41 a.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578644140963633244.html
WASHINGTON?Iran could begin producing weapons-grade plutonium by next
summer, U.S. and European officials believe, using a different nuclear
technology that would be easier for foreign countries to attack.
The second path to potentially producing a nuclear weapon could complicate
international efforts to negotiate with Iran's new president, Hasan Rouhani,
who was sworn in Sunday in Tehran. It also heightens the possibility of an
Israeli strike, said U.S. and European officials.
Until now, U.S. and Western governments had been focused primarily on Iran's
vast program to enrich uranium, one path to creating the fissile materials
needed for nuclear weapons. Now, the West is increasingly concerned Iran
also could use the development of a heavy water nuclear reactor to produce
plutonium for a bomb. A heavy-water reactor is an easier target to hit than
the underground facilities that house Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities.
Some Iranians and foreign diplomats hope that Mr. Rouhani, a former top
nuclear negotiator, will try to negotiate an end to the sanctions that have
crippled the Iranian economy. After being sworn in, Mr. Rouhani called on
the West to drop the sanctions. "If you seek a suitable answer, speak to
Iran through the language of respect, not through the language of
sanctions," he said.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr. Rouhani's
inauguration represented "an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to resolve
the international community's deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program."
"Should this new government choose to engage substantively and seriously to
meet its international obligations and find a peaceful solution to this
issue, it will find a willing partner in the United States," Mr. Carney
said.
In recent months, U.S. and European officials say, the Tehran regime has
made significant advances on the construction of a heavy water reactor in
the northwestern city of Arak. A reactor like the one under construction is
capable of using the uranium fuel to produce 40 megawatts of power. Spent
fuel from it contains plutonium?which, like enriched uranium, can serve as
the raw material for an explosive device. India and Pakistan have built
plutonium-based bombs, as has North Korea.
The Arak facility, when completed, will be capable of producing two nuclear
bombs' worth of plutonium a year, said U.S. and U.N. officials.
Iran has notified the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear
watchdog, that it plans to make the reactor operational by the second half
of 2014 and could begin testing it later this year.
IAEA has been monitoring Arak since its construction began. But following
Iran's latest timeline, the site's importance has vastly shot up for
Washington and Brussels, said U.S. and European officials. "It really crept
up on us," said an official based at the IAEA's Vienna headquarters.
Iran denies it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It has told the IAEA
it is building Arak to produce isotopes used in medical treatments, said
U.N. officials.
The development is of deep concern to Israel, which fears it could become
the target of any Iranian nuclear attack. It presents a new challenge to the
Obama administration's efforts to engage with Mr. Rouhani, a
Scottish-educated cleric who has pledged to negotiate with the U.S. and
other world powers over Tehran's nuclear program.
U.S. and European officials said in recent interviews that they are hoping
to start negotiations with Mr. Rouhani's new government in September.
"At this stage, our most pressing concern is dealing with the enrichment of
uranium. But we are increasingly concerned about activity?at Arak," said a
senior European official involved in the Iran diplomacy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to
attack Iran's nuclear facilities if international diplomacy stalls. He
publicly warned Iran in July not to move forward with the commissioning of
the Arak reactor, or risk facing military action.
"They're pursuing an alternate route of plutonium?to build a nuclear bomb,"
the Israeli leader said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on July 14. "They haven't
yet reached it, but they're getting closer to it. And they have to be
stopped."
Israel has twice destroyed reactors in neighboring Middle East countries
before they could produce plutonium, believing they were part of covert
nuclear-weapons programs. The Arak plant is viewed as a much easier facility
for the Israeli military to strike than Iran's enrichment facilities in the
cities of Natanz and Qom.
"There's no question that the reactor and its heavy water are more
vulnerable targets than the enrichment plants," said Gary Samore, who served
as President Barack Obama's top adviser on nuclear issues during his first
term. "This could be another factor in Netanyahu's calculations in deciding
how long to wait before launching military operations."
Any Israeli strike on the reactor complex, said current and former U.S.
officials, would likely have to take place before Tehran introduces nuclear
materials into the facility, because of the potential for a vast
environmental disaster a strike could cause.
Iran started building the Arak facility in 2004 based on designs provided by
Russia, according to former U.N. officials. Two years later, the U.N.
Security Council passed a resolution requiring Tehran to cease construction
because of the IAEA's concerns Iran might have a covert nuclear-weapons
program.
Tehran has refused to comply, one of the reasons the U.N. has enacted four
rounds of sanctions on Iran. It has also significantly restricted the IAEA's
ability to inspect the reactor and its development plans, according to U.N.
officials.
In June, Tehran announced it installed the reactor's vessel, which houses
the facility's nuclear fuel load. Tehran also has been mass producing
"pellets," comprised of natural uranium, to make up the fuel rods to run the
plant. In March, Iran told the IAEA it would produce 55 bundles of fuel rods
to power Arak by August.
Iran's plans to start running Arak by next summer might be ambitious, said
current and former IAEA officials.
Iran has missed a number of self-announced deadlines in the past to finish
building parts of its uranium-enrichment program. The IAEA also says that it
has no indications yet that Tehran has built a reprocessing facility at
Arak, which would be needed to harvest the plutonium from the reactor's
spent fuel.
Still, nuclear experts who have studied Arak said it was likely Iran could
start running Arak by the end of next year. "There is a good possibility
that [the reactor] can reach its first nuclear criticality by the end of
2014," said Olli Heinonen, a former head of the IAEA's inspections unit, who
is now at Harvard's Belfer Center, which focuses on the studies of
nuclear-arms reduction. "However?no significant quantity of plutonium should
be available for actual extraction before 2016."
U.S. and European officials are closely monitoring the formation of Mr.
Rouhani's new government to gauge what policies the president might pursue
in future nuclear negotiations.
On Sunday, Mr. Rouhani nominated U.S.-educated diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif
as foreign minister. Mr. Zarif, Iran's former U.N. ambassador, has been a
strong proponent of engagement with the U.S. He closely cooperated with the
George W. Bush administration after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to put
in place the government in Kabul now headed by President Hamid Karzai. U.S.
and European officials, who said Mr. Zarif's nomination is a promising sign,
are closely watching who Mr. Rouhani will name as his chief nuclear
negotiator.
?Laurence Norman in Brussels contributed to this article.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared August 5, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S.
edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Iran's New Path to a
Bomb.
