Edging Toward A Bomb
Iran disputes the implication. While Tehran has admitted that Natanz is being used for uranium enrichment, it insists the material is strictly for civilian power-generating purposes. Yet when officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited Natanz last February, what they saw, says one Tehran-based diplomat, “was pretty surprising. We had no idea they were so technically advanced.” One building on the site housed 160 functioning centrifuges–bulky, concrete-mixer-size machines that revolve to separate heavy, relatively unstable uranium isotopes from lighter ones when the element is in gaseous form....