Iran announces transfer to uranium enrichment plant to new site

10 June 2011

Iran has announced it would triple its uranium enrichment capacity and expand its production of higher-level enriched uranium. The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereidoon Abbasi, told reporters that he had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Tehran would transfer its nuclear enrichment facilities from the Natanz plant to the Fordo site, which is built deep inside a mountain near the city of Qom, according to the ‘Fars’ news agency. This hidden nuclear site was discovered in 2009 and led to new United Nations sanctions against Iran.

Abbasi said the IAEA would supervise the transfer of the enrichment process to Fordo.  On Monday, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said his agency had “received further information related to possible past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities that seem to point to the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” according to the ‘New York Times’. During an IAEA board meeting in Vienna, the US ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog, Glyn Davies, called the announcement "the most recent brazen example of [Iran's] deepening non-compliance" with its international nuclear obligations.