‘Iran has enough N-fuel for an atom bomb’

JERUSALEM: Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analysing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear facility at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630kg of low-enriched uranium.

Several experts said that was enough for a bomb, but they stressed that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, it would have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

“They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” said Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and who has advised Washington for decades. “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”

Iran insists it wants only to fuel reactors for nuclear power, but many Western nations, led by the US, suspect its real goal is gain the ability to make nuclear weapons.