Shayan Ghajar

While Iran sends mixed signals about its willingness to engage in talks with the Vienna Group or the United States regarding its nuclear program, alarming news about Iran’s most recent uranium enrichment processes has surfaced.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported this week that during an inspection of Iran’s facilities on July 17, IAEA scientists discovered that a secondary cascade of centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, have been activated by Iran in the Natanz plant. Iran is now utilizing two cascades to enrich uranium to 19.75% rather than one. When one stage of enrichment is completed in the first cascade, uranium is transferred to the second cascade while the “tail” uranium, essentially the leftovers of the initial process, is re-fed into the first cascade for enrichment.

This process results in less wasted uranium and is therefore more efficient. However, according to Iran, ample uranium deposits in the country demonstrate there is no shortage of nuclear material ready for enrichment, and therefore no pressing need to utilize over a hundred centrifuges in a second cascade simply to recycle uranium. This calls into question the point of utilizing two cascades in a supposedly peaceful program.

The Implications of the Second Cascade

According to the Institute for Science and International Security, which specializes in analysis of the scientific aspects of the proliferation of WMD, the secondary cascade represents a step towards weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program, rather than a drive to reduce uranium waste. ISIS asserts that Iran is following the same procedures outlined by A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, to Libya in producing weapons-grade uranium, a four-step process that utilizes two centrifuge cascades to streamline the enrichment process by speeding up enrichment and producing a greater portion of enriched uranium relative to the original amount of uranium put in the centrifuges. ISIS concludes, “Thus, Iran’s current actions, while superficially justified on civil grounds, mainly make sense in the context of learning how to make significant quantities of highly enriched uranium efficiently.”

As the BBC points out, Iran’s enrichment of uranium from 3.5%, useful for civilian energy purposes, to 19.75%, is also worrisome. In the process to produce weapons-grade uranium, a full 90% of the energy used in the process is expended enriching the uranium to just around 20%. It takes only 10% of the total energy of the enrichment process to bring uranium from 20% enrichment to the 95% enrichment required for a bomb. Thus, Iran’s recent activation of the second centrifuge cascade is an alarming escalation of Iran’s ability to go through with 90% of the weaponization process, and streamlines Iran’s capacity for making a nuclear weapon.

The 2nd Cascade and Iran’s Intent: Weaponization or the Threat of Weaponization?

Iran’s reasons for activating the second centrifuge cascade are unclear. The move, at the least, suggests a non-civilian intent in the development of its nuclear program and will certainly give pause to arguments that Iran’s intent is entirely peaceful, though Iran decries this as “media hype” without offering valid explanations for the escalation. The question that remains, however, is whether Iran wishes to pursue an actual weapon, or to use the possibility or threat of gaining a weapon as a deterrent.

Juan Cole argues that Iran seeks “nuclear latency,” in which a nuclear program is developed to the point where fabricating an actual nuclear missile is immediately possible, yet stopping just short of actually doing so. Like Japan, Cole argues, Iran may simply be seeking the potential of possessing a bomb rather than the actuality, to deter the possibility of foreign attack and to advance its geostrategic preeminence in the Middle East. “Nuclear latency has all the advantages of actual possession of a bomb without any of the unpleasant consequences, of the sort North Korea is suffering,” Cole argues.

Nevertheless, a potential problem with Cole’s argument is that as tensions rise between Iran and the West over its refusal to cease nuclear enrichment, the likelihood of foreign attack is increasingly dramatically. Iran is either willing to take the risk of entering into a massive conflict, or it doesn’t lend credence to threats from Israel and the approach that “all options are on the table.” If Iran is keeping its program’s intent ambiguous as a deterrent, this strategy runs a very high risk of backfiring by pushing Israel or the United States past their point of tolerance for the possibility of a nuclear Iran.