And what is the IAEA, which won a Nobel Prize only last year for its 'nonproliferation work' doing? It's sitting on its hands because it can't do anything. Iran is a huge failure of the nonproliferation scheme as espoused by the IAEA.
Iran wants nuclear weapons, and it now has cleared the first hurdle - to enrich uranium to the levels necessary to sustain its own nuclear reactor program. High enriched uranium, which requires 90% purity of the enriched uranium, will take more time, but since the Iranians have demonstrated proof of concept for their process, can now ramp up their program to vastly increase production and increase the enrichment process to weapons grade level.
Iran wants to ramp up to 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz (it only has 164 at present) by the end of this year and then up to 54,000 though no timeframe is set for that. The Iranians claim that this is for their peaceful nuclear program, but there's absolutely no reason to trust them on this - not when they have repeatedly stated that they want nuclear weapons and this technological achievement provides them with the means to accomplish that goal. It's only a matter of time.
UPDATE:
Tigerhawk notes that since the Iranians have mastered the enrichment cycle, they can do quite a bit with as little as 1,000 centrifuges. Iran plans 3,000 by the end of the year, and wants to have 54,000 at some point.
The following sites have more: The Political Pit Bull, Big Lizards, The Glittering Eye, and The Counterterrorism Blog. Scrappleface managed to inject a bit of humor in the situation.
Technorati: iran, uranium, nuclear proliferation, iaea, us, un.
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