Iranian MP Mansour Haqiqatpour, a top member in the Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, says that Iran will begin production of 60 percent enriched uranium if the current round of talks with the P5+1 fail.
The move to such highly enriched uranium would be seen as a provocative step by the West, though it should be pointed out that it still falls well below the threshold needed to produce nuclear weapons, which is over 90 percent enrichment.
The 60 percent enriched uranium would nominally be the level needed for fueling nuclear submarines, according to Haqiqatpour, but Iran’s Navy is not known to have any nuclear-powered submarines in the first place, so the need for such fuel is unclear.
At present most of Iran’s enrichment is dedicated to producing low-enriched uranium fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, while a small but significant portion is being used to produce 20 percent enriched uranium in an attempt to construct fuel rods for the aging Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), which produces medical isotopes.
The extent to which Haqiqatpour’s comments are a serious “threat” to escalate the civilian program is unclear, and it could just be an effort at “tough diplomacy.” Iranian FM Ali Akbar Salehi was in the US today, insisting that they retain hopes for the talks, and reiterating that Iran would never produce a nuclear weapon, saying it was irrational to even try.
Iran has ambitions for nuclear-powered submarines, as well as nuclear-powered oil tankers. Both objectives are reasonable for any modern technologically advanced country. Neither agenda falls outside the limitations placed by the UN IAEA nor as a signatory of the NNPT. The big problem with those ambitions is that they clash with the Israeli ambition of being the only technologically advanced country in the Middle East.
The second biggest problem is one that many pundits have thus far failed to address. An individual country's independent control over their entire nuclear fuel refining and reprocessing cycle gives them access to the very same technology that the USA, NATO and Israel have had for decades — the availability for use as astonishingly effective munitions the waste product of uranium enrichment known as Depleted Uranium. There is no better munition available for use against armored vehicles, aircraft, naval vessels, and for use as bunker busters.
Other Iranian advanced technologies, such as indigenous hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and the ability to overpower and down sophisticated USA drones should give the USA, NATO, and Israel a reason to squelch their warmongering rhetoric. I fully expect Iran has the capability to spoof or jam GPS signals, as well as having non-nuclear Electro Magnetic Pulse weapons. Even directed energy beam weapons, like military lasers, are not outside Iranian technological capabilities. Iran presents defensive military capabilities far more advanced than anything these hubris-filled warmongers have tangled with before. When war comes, expect surprises.
Iran not long ago said they were building nuclear powered oil tankers that would use the same fuel enrichment as subs.