The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest report on the Iranian nuclear program yesterday with somewhat of a mixed verdict. The bad news is that the Iranians are making steady if unspectacular progress in mastering the centrifuge technology necessary to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels. The good news is they still haven’t a clue on how to connect large numbers of centrifuges in order to produce enriched uranium on an industrial scale.

First, the MSM take on the IAEA report:

Iran has again defied U.N. demands to suspend its nuclear enrichment programs, according to a report issued yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, leading Bush administration officials to demand increased pressure on Tehran.

The IAEA report said that Iran has significantly accelerated its enrichment capability and has not provided a range of verification information to the agency. The IAEA’s “level of knowledge of certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear-related activities has deteriorated,” the four-page document said. The report described the last 60 days of activity since an assessment in March led to the adoption of a U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran. That resolution stepped up the sanctions initially authorized in December.

“The pressure so far has not produced the results that we all have been hoping for,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “The time has come,” he said, to “ratchet up the pressure to bring about a change in Iranian calculation.”...

Yesterday’s IAEA report said that during a surprise visit on May 13, nuclear inspectors found eight operating enrichment cascades—each with 164 centrifuges, for a total of 1,312—being fed uranium hexafluoride at the underground facility near the town of Natanz. Five additional cascades were in various stages of completion. The number was more than four times the total number of centrifuges operating at the time of the last IAEA report, in February.

Although the total was far from the 3,000 centrifuges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted would be operating by May, some nuclear experts said that point could be reached by early summer. The glass “is a little more than half full,” said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

How has Iran “significantly accelerated” it’s program? This is directly from the report (HT: Arms Control Wonks):

Since the Director General’s last report, Iran has fed approximately 260 kg of UF6 into the cascades at FEP. Iran has declared that it has reached enrichment levels up to 4.8% U-235 at FEP, which the Agency is in the process of verifying. On 13 May 2007, eight 164-machine cascades were operating simultaneously and were being fed with UF6; two other similar cascades had been vacuum tested and three more were under construction.

The Iranians achieved the ability to connect 164 of the centrifuges in order to create a cascade that enriched uranium hex to around 5% last year. The fact that they have been unable to go beyond that and create much larger cascades is significant, although it is worrisome that they have so many of these “mini-cascades” operating at once. The experts that I’ve read also believe that Iran has just begun to introduce UF 6 or Uranium Hexafluoride directly into the centrifuges rather than injecting “feedstock” into the machines to prevent them from breaking.

Short version of report: Iran is making steady progress toward industrial production of enriched uranium but still faces significant obstacles to achieving that goal. And those obstacles are perhaps the most daunting in the entire enrichment process – connecting hundreds and hundreds of centrifuges into one, gigantic machine which will operate for long periods of time in order to enrich the uranium to the magic 85% level for bomb making.

Even if they can connect all 1300+ centrifuges, it would take a year of perfect operation for the cascade to produce enough U-235 for one bomb. Thankfully, this level of technical expertise is still beyond them. But it should worry us that they appear to be making steady progress toward that goal.

It is also worrying that the Iranians appear to be making progress elsewhere in their nuclear program. Construction of the IR-40 reactor and the operation of the Heavy Water Production Plant are continuing. This will speed the production of plutonium once the Iranians start enriching Uranium hex to industrial levels.

This still gives us time for sanctions and diplomacy to work. How much time? Certainly less time than our brilliant intelligence people thought only two summers ago when they confidently predicted Iran wouldn’t have the bomb for perhaps a decade. The Iranians are moving farther and faster than anyone in our intelligence community thought possible which makes one wonder why they even bother in the first place. Bush might be better off throwing darts at a board marked “countdown to Armageddon” with a series of numbers representing the length of time in years before Iran gets the bomb.

It would seem that might be a more accurate way to predict when the mullahs will be able to threaten their neighbors with nukes than relying on legions of intelligence bureaucrats who seem more concerned about not sticking their necks out instead of delivering intelligent, accurate analysis.

Too hard on our intel people? You bet! We spend upwards of $70 billion on hardware, software, and the care and feeding of thousands of analysts and this was the best we can do? (Andy: I know I don’t know what I’m talking about but something is still wrong with that picture.)

Leaving aside our failed intelligence on the Iranian nuke program, the question is where do we go from here? While there is still time for sanctions to work, the question of how severe we can make them and still bring along China and Russia at the UN remains unknown:

At a news conference last week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said that the United States would push for a third Security Council resolution if the IAEA report was negative. The measure is expected to require additional restrictions on Iran, including mandatory travel bans on specific government officials, expanded prohibitions against dealing with Iranian companies and banks, and new sanctions against companies associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Arms imports from Iran are currently banned; a ban on weapons exports to the country is also being considered.

U.S. officials said yesterday that the administration will delay pressing for new Security Council action until after the talks scheduled for next Thursday between European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. On behalf of the United States, France, Britain and Germany, Solana has been instructed to consider even a month-long suspension as Iranian progress, but Iran has refused and officials expressed little optimism the meeting would lead to a breakthrough.

Poor Larijani. The guy has tried to resign at least 5 times in the last few months, protesting Ahmadinejad’s wild rhetoric as well as his choice for Foreign Minister, Manuchehr Mottaki. But Supreme Leader Khamenei has rejected his resignation each time, if only because he seems to be the one Iranian negotiator who has any credibility with the western powers.

Meanwhile, Mohamed ElBaradei has recently proven once again that the IAEA is a nuclear enabling organization rather than an enforcement agency:

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei infuriated the administration and its European partners last week by telling reporters that the demands for suspension have been “superseded by events” in Iran. He said they should accept a certain level of uranium enrichment in exchange for more inspections and Iranian agreement not to expand the program.

“We vehemently disagree . . . with the contention that somehow the international community should allow Iran to get away with violating all of its obligations,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in criticizing the IAEA chief. The official said that U.S., French and British officials will meet with ElBaradei at IAEA headquarters in Vienna tomorrow to express their displeasure.

Although I hesitate to use the analogy of a woman being raped told to lie back and enjoy it, in this case the shoe fits. ElBaradei has been undercutting a strong policy toward Iran for years even though his own agency has shown that the mullahs are not being forthcoming about their program and are obstructing the IAEA from doing its job:

One of the most striking things about the report is its emphasis on what the IAEA doesn’t know about Iran’s program because of Tehran’s lack of transparency. Not only has Iran refused to cooperate (for the most part) with the IAEA’s requests for information about Iran’s nuclear program(s), but Iran still won’t implement the additional protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement.

The UN Security Council, BTW, has required Tehran to cooperate with the investigation and ratify its additional protocol.

Anyway, this lack of cooperation is clearly impairing the IAEA’s investigation. According to the report:

because the Agency has not been receiving for over a year information that Iran used to provide, including under the Additional Protocol, the Agency’s level of knowledge of certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear related activities has deteriorated.

That information includes

information relevant to the assembly of centrifuges, the manufacture of centrifuge components or associated equipment and research and development of centrifuges or enrichment techniques.

This does not bode well for future inspections. The Iranians can continue to obstruct the IAEA from doing its job as long as the price they pay for doing so is cheap. Much broader and tougher sanctions are called for. Whether they will be forthcoming is anyone’s guess.