IAEA: Iran may have halted nuke program

[dogday]

VIENNA, Austria — Iran seems to have at least temporarily halted the uranium-enrichment program at the heart of its standoff with the U.N. Security Council, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday.

The pause could represent an attempt to de-escalate Iran's conflict with the Security Council, which is deliberating a new set of harsher sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Iran has enriched small quantities of uranium to the low level suitable for nuclear fuel generation. The U.S. and its allies fear that Iran could build nuclear weapons with larger amounts of more highly enriched uranium.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been expected to announce last month that Iran had started installing 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at a facility in the desert outside the central city of Natanz, where it has about 500 centrifuges above and below ground. But the announcement never materialized, an apparent step back that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei appeared to confirm Monday.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4603804.html

[MadHound]

1. Could very well be a pause to upgrade his facilities

After all, he does have three thousand centrifuges to install:shrug:

Or perhaps Ahmadinejad has decided to play it cagey with Bush, taking away one of Bushboy's excuses du jour to invade Iran.

We'll see.

[leveymg]

4. 3,000 completed P-1s? What's your source on that?

The Guardian ran an article about a month ago that decribed the program as being in disarray, far behind schedule, and what machines they do have as jerry-rigged affairs prone to breakdown.

I'd be shocked and dumbfounded if the Iranian installed 3,000 operating centrifuges in one spot.

[MadHound]

6. It was making its way through the news cycle a couple of weeks ago

<http://www.cfr.org/publication/12683/irans_undeterred_nuclear_quest.html>

And I don't know about Iran's program being in dissarray. The machines that they've currently got installed are only a few years old, and unless they got the Tinkertoy models, those puppies should still be running like champs:shrug:

I'm really not terribly concerned about it, even with an array of three thousand, the Iranians would still be at least a decade away from having a bomb. Plenty of time to come to an agreement, work the diplomacy angle, etc. But first it would require Bushboy to stop beating the drums of war.

[porphyrian]

2. Whew. They were almost seven years away from success. Close call.

:eyes:

[peacetalksforall]

3. Remember this. Save this. Follow this. Use this to inform everyone

you can. The U.S., the U.K., and Israel are losing their justification for taking out the people and infrastructure of Iran (and moving in to the country if they follow Iraq Afghanistan).

[Atman]

5. Pffle. What do THEY know? Bush FEELS Iran's weapons program!

"Y'know, down there in mah gut. Hehehe. Bring 'em on."

.