5 Nuclear Sites That Could Launch War With Iran

Danger Room - This week, the U.S. and its allies will sit down with some of their arch-nemeses: the Iranians. The meeting in Baghdad is the definition of high stakes, as 2012 has been characterized by frequent speculation that Israel would bomb Teheran to prevent it from going nuclear, launching a war that would inevitably draw the U.S. in. That's something the U.S. doesn't want – the Air Force chief of staff has publicly questioned the wisdom of a bombing campaign – but big, unresolved questions persist about Iran's nuclear program, which Iran swears exists just to produce peaceful nuclear energy.

In particular, those questions primarily concern five installations that trouble the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world's nuclear watchdog. And unless you're a nuclear wonk, you probably don't understand them.

But you should. Granting the IAEA unfettered access to these five sites – some of which concern the IAEA more than others – is probably the most important step Iran could take to avert a war. Getting Iran to "Yes" will be an arduous diplomatic process that likely involves international economic sanctions, a U.S. military buildup off its shores, some prospect for improved relations with the world – and, arguably, the threat of a war. And there's an additional X-factor: nuclear sites that the IAEA doesn't know Iran even has. But watching what happens over the following five sites, during the Baghdad talks and afterward, will go a long way to determining if the U.S. will be dragged into its third mideastern war in a decade.

Fordow (Qom)

Fordow is a uranium enrichment facility not far from the clerical hotspot of Qom. (That's why the facility is often referred to as "Qom.") Under construction since 2009, when Iran was already under tight IAEA scrutiny, the existence of the facility was a secret until Western intelligence agencies uncovered it. Not surprisingly, in a November report, the IAEA said that "additional information from Iran is still needed in connection with this facility."

Here's what the IAEA thinks it knows about Fordow. There are a variety of centrifuge cascades, or arrays of centrifuges for enriching uranium, totaling 696 centrifuges. The IAEA initially understood that Fordow would only enrich uranium to a 5 percent standard, which is too low for use in a bomb. But the IAEA had to confirm that the Iranians had a change of heart, and began enriching to 20 percent.

To be clear, the enrichment process is a method to get rid of most of the atoms in uranium, yielding the fissile isotope Uranium-235. Twenty percent enrichment isn't sufficient for bomb-grade fuel, which is 90 percent enriched uranium. But as the Arms Control Association clarifies, "such material can be further enriched to weapons-grade levels relatively quickly." The U.S. called the extra enrichment a provocative act of bad faith, which will almost certainly be revisited in Baghdad.

Photo: Institute for Science and International Security

Parchin

Parchin, shown above, is a massive military R&D facility that works on rocket, ammo and high-explosives tech. All of which is important to the detonation of a bomb, so the IAEA wants to inspect the place again, as it did early in the '00s. No luck. After January's meeting between the IAEA and Iran, the nuclear watchdogs reported "Iran did not grant access to the site at that time."           More

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Wired - It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium.

Natanz technicians in white lab coats, gloves and blue booties were scurrying in and out of the “clean” cascade rooms, hauling out unwieldy centrifuges one by one, each sheathed in shiny silver cylindrical casings.

Any time workers at the plant decommissioned damaged or otherwise unusable centrifuges, they were required to line them up for IAEA inspection to verify that no radioactive material was being smuggled out in the devices before they were removed. The technicians had been doing so now for more than a month.

Normally Iran replaced up to 10 percent of its centrifuges a year, due to material defects and other issues. With about 8,700 centrifuges installed at Natanz at the time, it would have been normal to decommission about 800 over the course of the year.     More