Today, Iran has begun using an array of 215 IR-25 centrifuges and another 212 of IR-4 centrifuges, Kamalvandi said.
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The attack on Iran's centrifuges used computer code that sped up and slowed down their nuclear centrifuges until they spun out of control.
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It reduced its centrifuges, including removing the centrifuges in its underground Fordow uranium enrichment facility and refraining from enriching uranium there for 15 years. 5.
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Its limits on the number of first-generation centrifuges Iran can possess, and on the research and development of more advanced centrifuges, are scheduled to end in 2025.
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The announcement came a day after Iran said it had doubled the number of more advanced centrifuges operating at Natanz, and planned to install even more efficient centrifuges.
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The deal allows the Islamic Republic to operate up to 5,060 first-generation centrifuges for 10 years at its Natanz plant and 1,044 first-generation centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment plant.
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At that moment, Iran's nuclear plants held an estimated 11,500 centrifuges and nearly seven tons of low-enriched uranium — totals that would rise to nearly 20,000 centrifuges and eight tons of uranium.
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The announcement came a day after Iran said it had launched 30 new advanced IR-6 centrifuges, doubling the number of those centrifuges in use, according to Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi.
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Commercial centrifuges, however, are heavy and require power to run.
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This is a rate comparable to that of electrical centrifuges.
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Highly enriched uranium requires large industrial facilities with precise centrifuges.
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In September, it began enriching with newer, more productive centrifuges.
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There were machines that looked like centrifuges and other contraptions.
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They had stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away.
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These were so called P1 centrifuges — an early Pakistan design.
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Are the reactors and the centrifuges to be rendered inoperable?
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Tubing, syringes and centrifuges were sterilised only once a day.
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Iran invited International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to Fordow - where the deal lets it have centrifuges for purposes other than uranium enrichment - for the feeding of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into the centrifuges on Wednesday.
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The attack using the "Stuxnet" virus that crippled Iranian nuclear-enrichment centrifuges a decade ago was successful in a narrow sense: It blew up 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges up and running at the time.
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Its advanced centrifuges have been slashed from over 1,000 to zero.
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Excess centrifuges will be stored at Natanz under continuous IAEA monitoring.
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The 2015 agreement had restricted the centrifuges to non-nuclear uses.
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Somehow I learned that he did work on centrifuges in Iran.
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Promised to reduce its number of centrifuges from 20,000 to 6,000.
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"At Kangsong they're using gas centrifuges," Albright told CNN's Brian Todd.
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Centrifuges are allowed there for other purposes, like producing stable isotopes.
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Those lines comprise relatively small cascades of up to 20 centrifuges.
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These IR-1 centrifuges produce between 0.75 and 1 SWU per device, whereas the IR-8 centrifuges Iran was developing at the time of the deal could theoretically manage 24 SWU, making them much more efficient.
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That means the Obama administration and Europeans claimed a Pyrrhic victory, mothballing obsolete Iranian IR-1 centrifuges while acquiescing to the Iranian demand for the development of the next generation of ultrafast centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
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These IR-1 centrifuges produce between 19413 and 1 SWU per device, whereas the IR-8 centrifuges Iran was developing at the time of the deal could theoretically manage 24 SWU, making them much more efficient.
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In the interview, Salehi says the facility&aposs construction began even before the 2015 deal was signed and that he hopes the first centrifuges — known as old-generation centrifuges — will roll out in a month&aposs time.
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The agreement also reduced the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds.
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Before the deal, Iran had 20,000 centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordow.
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Iran has also agreed to operate only two-thirds of its centrifuges.
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They could still be spinning centrifuges to create fuel for nuclear bombs.
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He spoke from a podium with advanced centrifuges standing next to him.
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Previous Iranian breaches, however, have not been related to adding advanced centrifuges.
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In other words, Iran is prepared to let its nuclear centrifuges spin.
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Iran said this week that it had increased its supply of advanced centrifuges and reactivated a much larger number of old centrifuges that had been idle, accelerating its ability to produce enough nuclear material to make a bomb.
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In the case of the Flame and Stuxnet attacks against Iran's centrifuges in 22019 and 2010, the code targeted a certain model of PLCs — programmable logic controllers – that controlled the interaction between Iran's computers and their uranium centrifuges.
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USA Today reported that Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Monday that the country is now operating 60 IR-6 centrifuges, which enrich uranium at a faster rate than other types of centrifuges operated by the country.
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" When the United States first imposed nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, he said, the Iranians had 200 centrifuges to enrich uranium, but when the Americans "started negotiating with us in order to remove those sanctions, we had 20,000 centrifuges.
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When they came to the negotiating table we had twenty thousand centrifuges spinning.
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Under the agreement, Iran is permitted to operate around 6,000 first generation centrifuges.
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It has also begun injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground facility.
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It also just began injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground facility.
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On Monday, Iranian officials doubled the number of advanced centrifuges they are operating.
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The bug ordered centrifuges to spin out of control, damaging hundreds of them.
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They had built covert facilities, stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away.
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The first was Stuxnet, which targeted Iran's nuclear centrifuges and physically damaged them.
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Under the deal, Iran was limited to operating around 5,903 older-model centrifuges.
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First, these advanced centrifuges will accelerate the ongoing expansion of Iran's LEU stockpile.
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On Monday, Iran said it had accelerated enrichment by doubling the number of advanced IR-6 centrifuges in operation, adding that it was working on "a prototype called the IR-9, which works 50 times faster than IR-1 centrifuges".
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On Monday, Iran said it had accelerated enrichment by doubling the number of advanced IR-6 centrifuges in operation, adding that it was working on "a prototype called the IR-9, which works 50 times faster than IR-1 centrifuges".
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Recap: Iran said this week that it had increased its supply of advanced centrifuges and had reactivated a much larger number of old centrifuges that had been idle, stepping up its ability to produce nuclear material to make a bomb.
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And if the oil pumps are still off, the centrifuges may come back on.
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"Technical discussions in relation to the IR-6 centrifuges are ongoing," the report said.
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The computer virus, dubbed "Stuxnet," disabled 1,193 of Iran's 5,000 centrifuges at the time.
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Iran had more than 19,000 first-generation centrifuges installed; that number is now 6,803.
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The Iranians have also severely reduced the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
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Iran is very near to completing the removal of some 14,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
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Fordo's 1,044 centrifuges were previously empty under the deal, according to the wire service.
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The centrifuges would be injected with the uranium gas as of Wednesday, Rouhani said.
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Just as sanctions put pressure on Tehran, more centrifuges put the squeeze on Washington.
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The report said the other four cascades of centrifuges installed at Fordow "remained unchanged".
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It was unclear whether the assembly center would actually begin to produce new centrifuges.
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It concerned centrifuges and Iran's clear but never avowed quest for a nuclear bomb.
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He did not say did not say whether the centrifuges would produce enriched uranium.
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It is installing advanced centrifuges well beyond the numbers allowed in the nuclear deal.
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Centrifuges are more energy-efficient than other enrichment techniques and are harder to detect.
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If you can shut down the electric grid in Ukraine, or destroy centrifuges in Iran, or sabotage an election by manipulating data -- data that runs the grid, the centrifuges, or the way we vote -- you have a new attack vector: information bombs.
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For example, after eight years (ie, in 2023), limits on the use of faster-spinning uranium-enrichment centrifuges are relaxed; in 2028 Iran can ramp up the number of centrifuges it employs; after 2030 constraints on Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium disappear.
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Under the deal, Iran agreed to reduce the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds.
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Installing thousands of new centrifuges and building a huge uranium stockpile will not pass muster.
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The agreement has also frozen and reversed Iran's dramatic increase in centrifuges to enrich uranium.
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It built a research reactor with the Soviets, and bought centrifuges from Pakistan in 1997.
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The Stuxnet worm disabled almost 20 percent of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, according to security experts.
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Centrifuges are used to separate out the main components of blood: plasma and blood cells.
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On Monday, Iran announced it now is spinning 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges as well.
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He did not mention other more advanced centrifuges, including the most advanced, the IR-8.
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Using advanced centrifuges means a shorter time would be needed to push up its enrichment.
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It can use far fewer more advanced centrifuges for research but without accumulating enriched uranium.
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The product is created by placing trimmings in centrifuges to separate lean meat from fat.
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It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,220 centrifuges.
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Rouhani said Tuesday that the centrifuges at Fordo would be injected with gas on Wednesday.
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Rouhani said that Iran has previously informed IAEA that it would start using advanced centrifuges.
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Some of these centrifuges appear to be based on Pakistani designs provided by AQ Khan.
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With enough centrifuges, getting enough usable uranium for either would only take a few weeks.
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It turns Fordow into a "nuclear, physics and technology center" where centrifuges are used for purposes other than enrichment, like producing stable isotopes here The JCPOA: - Slashes the number of centrifuges installed in Iran to roughly 6,000 from around 19,000 before the deal here.
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Velayati says Iran should also accelerate production of nuclear propulsions and also research on advanced centrifuges.
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And he said Iran was to making plans to install more advanced centrifuges in the future.
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The centrifuges are used to separate the rare, highly radioactive isotope, uranium 235, from uranium 238.
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It can use small numbers of more advanced centrifuges for research, but without accumulating enriched uranium.
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The 3.673 deal banned enrichment and nuclear materials there but allowed some centrifuges for research purposes.
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Too often in Washington, the debate about Iran centers only on nuclear centrifuges and ballistic missiles.
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"They were able to acquire and put into operation a significant number of centrifuges," she said.
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They dismantled thousands of centrifuges and filled the core of a major plutonium reactor with cement.
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He told our interviewer that when the sanctions were first imposed, Iran had 200 working centrifuges.
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Among the limitations was a requirement that Iran use only 22.1,2130 first-generation IR-153 centrifuges.
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It said that Iran had installed 1,057 centrifuges there, and that 1,044 are now enriching uranium.
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It's not easy, but advanced centrifuges have simplified the process and made the task far cheaper.
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In the meantime, Iran's expansion of its enrichment with advanced centrifuges continues, according to the IAEA.
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The announcement represents a significant development as Fordo's 1,13 centrifuges previously spun empty under the deal.
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The JCPOA also: - Slashes the number of centrifuges installed in Iran to roughly 6,000 from around 19,153 before the deal - Only allows Iran to produce enriched uranium with its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges - Allows Iran to use small numbers of more advanced centrifuges for research, but without accumulating enriched uranium, for 10 years The deal caps Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium at 300 kg of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 3.67 percent or its equivalent for 15 years.
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The JCPOA also: - Slashes the number of centrifuges installed in Iran to roughly 6,000 from around 19,153 before the deal - Only allows Iran to produce enriched uranium with its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges - Allows Iran to use small numbers of more advanced centrifuges for research, but without accumulating enriched uranium, for 10 years The deal caps Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium at 300 kg of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 3.67% or its equivalent for 15 years.
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The infamous Stuxnet worm was the first, causing physical destruction of nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2009.
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The net result is, when they started the sanctions we had less than two hundred centrifuges spinning.
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Centrifuges' many uses include the separation of medical samples (of blood, urine, sputum and stool) for analysis.
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In 2010, a cyberattack took out nearly 1,000 centrifuges that Iran had been using to purify uranium.
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American aircraft carried documents and equipment, including parts of centrifuges and missiles, to a laboratory in Tennessee.
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Iran is to build new centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site, increasing its capacity to enrich uranium.
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It famously is believed to have helped develop the Stuxnet worm that attacked nuclear centrifuges in Iran.
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Image: RWT/APBeet sugar centrifuges separating sugar from syrup, inside a sugar beet processing plant, California, c19663.
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"The number of active centrifuges has been reduced after the nuclear deal," Larijani said, according to Tasnim.
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When actual machinery, Iranian nuclear centrifuges, experienced real damage, the importance of cybersecurity started to sink in.
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The parts were destined for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a JNFL spokesman said by phone.
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Iran is also allowed to refine uranium only with its first-generation, lower-capacity IR-1 centrifuges.
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The deal's most significant restrictions on enrichment and advanced centrifuges will be lifted over the next decade.
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Hackers were still able to hack into that and blow up the centrifuges pretty much at will.
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More and more centrifuges were spinning each month and the world wasn't united like it is now.
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Iran also gave up about 214.1 percent of its existing stockpile and two-thirds of its centrifuges.
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The country is now using advanced centrifuges, fragile machines that spin at high speeds, to enrich uranium.
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" Brewer said that the bigger question "is whether Iran acts on this announcement by adding more centrifuges.
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In negotiating the JCPOA, Tehran's main leverage was its growing number of centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpile.
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It was about centrifuges, not Iranian support for Hezbollah; enriched uranium, not Iran's terrible human rights record.
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Officials in Tehran have yet to say how many centrifuges they will add to their current fleet.
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They're pretty rudimentary, but according to Pomper, Iran has started to work on faster advanced uranium centrifuges.
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I'm not saying the Iranians were developing the nuclear centrifuges at Natanz for good and wonderful purposes.
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He said Iran had the capacity to accelerate production of centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.
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Stuxnet, the American-Israeli computer worm that was used to destroy centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility in 2009 and 2010, used four vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and one in a printer service to attack and spin Iran's uranium centrifuges out of control, or stop spinning them entirely.
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Given the recent fidget spinner fad, though, there should be plenty of discarded spinners to retrofit into centrifuges.
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They're also testing custom-made, 3D-printed, handheld devices that should be even more efficient, low-tech centrifuges.
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In 2005, Iran acknowledged converting yellowcake into uranium tetrafluoride, a step below the uranium hexafluoride needed for centrifuges.
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Centrifuges, which separate materials in fluids by spinning them at great speed, are found in medical labs worldwide.
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Enriched uranium, if spun in centrifuges to higher levels of purity, can be used to power nuclear bombs.
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Iran's centrifuges can produce a bomb faster than sanctions can topple the regime, goes the logic of hardliners.
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You do not go to war with Iran lightly—would Mr Trump fight over, say, some extra centrifuges?
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When we agreed and announced that research should be continued, at that time we had 9,000 centrifuges working.
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Context: The 0003 agreement limited Iran to using about 5,000 older centrifuges at its main nuclear development facility.
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Iran agreed to cease enrichment at Fordow for 15 years, keeping only 1,044 centrifuges spinning for scientific purposes.
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Context: The 2015 agreement limited Iran to using about 5,000 older centrifuges at its main nuclear development facility.
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It limited Iran to using about 155,000 older centrifuges at its main nuclear development facility for 10 years.
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Stuxnet altered the PLC programming and caused the centrifuges to spin too quickly for too long a time.
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The facility is smaller than the enrichment plant at Natanz, and it only ever housed first-generation centrifuges.
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Before the JCPOA came into force, Iran had close to 20,000 uranium enrichment machines, called centrifuges, in operation.
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Prior to the deal, Iran had close to 20,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facilities, Natanz and Fordow.
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Iran had 20,000 centrifuges before the deal but under the agreement could only operate a maximum of 5,060.
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The clandestine effort -- untaken with Israel -- deployed a computer virus security researchers nicknamed Stuxnet that destroyed Iranian centrifuges.
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It destroyed almost 1,000 centrifuges by altering their speed, while telling the control system that all was well.
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Under the accord, Iran was allowed to keep restricted quantities of first-generation centrifuges at two nuclear plants.
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The intelligence community eventually spotted shipments from Russia and Pakistan containing parts for centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
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Are you going to let their crippling sanctions and the Israeli destruction of your priceless centrifuges go unanswered?
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It announced last week that it would resume the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material.
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The first, code-named Olympic Games, was judged successful at destroying about 1,000 nuclear centrifuges for a year.
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Those rare specimens of malware have destroyed nuclear enrichment centrifuges in Iran and caused a blackout in Ukraine.
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Centrifuges are allowed there for other purposes, like producing stable isotopes here Iran began enriching there on Nov.
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Iran is now enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges and installing more that should come online in coming weeks.
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And the Iranians have already made clear they have little interest in bringing back their old, inefficient centrifuges.
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Nearly a decade ago, the so-called Stuxnet virus took out nearly 1,000 of Iran's 6,000 nuclear centrifuges.
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President Rouhani later confirmed in September that the nation was using advanced models of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
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The senators accuse Iran of operating advanced centrifuges in numbers beyond what is permitted by the nuclear agreement.
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For example, the U.S. deployed the Stuxnet virus against Iranian nuclear centrifuges in 2010 after diplomacy broke down.
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Under the accord, Iran was allowed to keep restricted quantities of first-generation centrifuges at two nuclear plants.
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It has seen Iran remove 13,000 centrifuges together with associated infrastructure and eliminate its stock of 20% enriched uranium.
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Centrifuges can help isolate and detect low levels of infection, pathogens and parasites in blood, urine and stool samples.
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It will be permitted to operate up to 2000,22006 first-generation centrifuges for 22010 years at its Natanz plant.
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Last month, Salehi announced that Iran has begun working on infrastructure for building advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility.
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With the stockpile and centrifuges it has working at Natanz today, the breakout time would be over a year.
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Once under control of the attackers, the centrifuges were made to spin faster than normal and some even exploded.
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"Iran cannot claim benign intent on the world stage while it purchases and stockpiled products for centrifuges," he added.
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To comply, Iran has removed two-thirds of its centrifuges, and is permitted only limited testing of advanced technologies.
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But on November 6th it began injecting uranium gas into those centrifuges for the first time in four years.
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The development is significant as the centrifuges previously spun empty, without gas injection, under the landmark 2015 nuclear accord.
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The development is significant as the centrifuges previously spun empty, without gas injection, under the landmark 211 nuclear accord.
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Those terms included shipping enriched material to Russia, drawing down its stock of centrifuges and destroying a plutonium reactor.
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Under the atomic accord, Iran had been limited to operating 5,060 older-model IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz only.
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The Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint US-Israeli creation, soon disrupted thousands of Iranian centrifuges.
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President Hassan Rouhani later confirmed in September that the nation was using advanced models of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
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The most famous attack, code-named Olympic Games, wiped out about 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment site.
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What's keeping the JCPOA alive is Iran still allowing the nuclear inspectors access to their uranium centrifuges and stockpiles.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that Tehran was working on advanced IR-9 centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
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The deal placed limits on the use of centrifuges for research and development, but did not bar it outright.
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On Wednesday, it began escalating its uranium enrichment activities, injecting gas into centrifuges at its infamous underground Fordow plant.
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Iran announced Saturday that had started to use advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium in violation of the nuclear accord.
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Today, diagnostics rely heavily on centrifuges, machines with rapidly rotating containers that separate fluids of different densities through centrifugal force.
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Those conditions include ensuring that the fuel cannot be converted to uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges that enrich uranium.
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Iran also mothballed much of its centrifuges, the devices it uses to enrich uranium by rapidly spinning uranium hexafluoride gas.
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Centrifuges — machines that spin super fast and separate biological materials — can cost thousands of dollars and need electricity to function.
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The famed Stuxnet attack injected a formidable computer worm into Iran's Natanz enrichment facility in 0003, destroying about 1,000 centrifuges.
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Despite its sophistication — and the roughly 1,000 centrifuges destroyed — it probably slowed the program for only a year or so.
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Under the deal, Iran committed to reduce its operating centrifuges enriching uranium by two-thirds, to just over 5,000 machines.
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Related: President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said today that the country would inject uranium gas into more than 33,000 centrifuges.
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Iran has since gone beyond the deal's stockpile and enrichment limits, and started using advanced centrifuges barred by the deal.
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"Today, we are witnessing the launch of the cascade (operating set) of 30 IR-6 centrifuges," Salehi told state television.
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Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran agreed to reduce its number of centrifuges and to use older, less efficient models.
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In Iran: Iranian officials marked the day by announcing they were doubling the amount of advanced centrifuges they are operating.
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Isn't it a fact that since the Obama-Biden administration took office, 70 percent of Iran's centrifuges have been installed?
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The worm they developed, dubbed Stuxnet, targeted the machines that controlled uranium-enriching centrifuges in the Iranian city of Natanz.
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IAEA inspectors have verified that smaller numbers of various advanced centrifuges had been or were being installed, the spokesman added.
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The weapon worked, damaging Iranian nuclear centrifuges — but it also unexpectedly popped up in 25,000 other computers around the world.
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Iran, it said, currently has 5,060 centrifuges installed underground at its Natanz plant — the number the 2015 nuclear deal allowed.
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Iran said it will not abide by the deal's caps on the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges it can operate.
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Centrifuges rusted in a former agricultural lab while birds nested among rotting books and technical manuals in a former library.
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And while he is sitting with Trump in Hanoi, his centrifuges continue to spin and missile factories continue to build.
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"The head of AEIO personally inaugurated the installation of new advanced centrifuges to expand its uranium enrichment capacity," Hook claimed.
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"Presently, there are around 60 IR-6 centrifuges, producing 600 SWU of energy," Salehi told state television IRIB on Monday.
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And it worked, at least for a while, causing Iran's centrifuges to whirr out of control and ultimately destroy themselves.
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"We are aware of their sensitiveness toward the Fordo facility and those centrifuges," Rouhani said in a live televised address.
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JL: The number of centrifuges, the amount of material they can have, the type of access that the IAEA has.
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Under the deal, Iran is allowed to manufacture parts for centrifuges but isn't allowed to install them for 10 years.
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Kamalvandi said options included enriching uranium to 20% purity or beyond, and restarting IR-2 M centrifuges dismantled under the deal.
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The first, Stuxnet, was used by the US and Israel to destroy centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in 2009.
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In fact, the paperfuge can spin blood at about 20,000 revolutions per minute — a speed comparable to that of traditional centrifuges.
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In 2010, the so-called Stuxnet virus disrupted the operation of thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran.
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Some even posited that perhaps the hackers repurposed the famous American-Israeli malware Stuxnet, which crippled Iranian nuclear centrifuges in 2010.
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This is a tricky task, and one that requires some biochemical training and often the use of centrifuges and expensive reagents.
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That program, code-named Olympic Games, used a worm that was later named Stuxnet to knock the centrifuges out of operation.
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This was the best that we had, because we got to it too late and too many centrifuges were already going.
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Since this summer, Iran has installed 60 advanced centrifuges, with plans to add more, and has broken that 660-pound cap.
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Since this summer, Iran has installed 60 advanced centrifuges, with plans to add more, and has broken that 0003-pound cap.
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Mr. Rouhani talked about injecting the gas into 1,044 centrifuges at the Fordow nuclear facility, a major step toward uranium enrichment.
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"With the presence of inspectors from International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran started injecting (uranium) gas into centrifuges in Fordow," TV reported.
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All of Iran's nuclear facilities, including those intended to make atomic bombs, were retained, along with the bulk of their centrifuges.
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According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, aluminum oxide is used to avert corrosion in gas centrifuges during uranium enrichment.
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The nuclear deal between Iran and other world powers limited Iran to 2628,28503 first-generation IR-22019 centrifuges to enrich uranium.
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Under the 2015 agreement, Iran may only operate 30 IR-6 centrifuges once an initial delay period ending in 85033 passes.
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North Korea announces it has a facility with 2,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium and fires artillery at a South Korean island.
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Some of the prohibitions in the agreement are set to end in 2025, including limits on the number of its centrifuges.
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Jammed outside of the spinning centrifuges of Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Texas, California shows up all green on Slice's heat map.
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The first was Stuxnet, the US and Israeli malware that destroyed a thousand Iranian nuclear enrichment centrifuges roughly a decade ago.
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The situation was even more worrying because, month by month, Iran was installing more centrifuges and building up its uranium stockpile.
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"They are not saying how far they will push the enrichment or the number of centrifuges they'll operate," Fitzpatrick told Reuters.
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Iran announced Saturday that is has begun using advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, further violating the 6900 nuclear pact it joined.
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The deal only lets Iran accumulate enriched uranium with just over 5,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz.
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The operation was also a bust: It destroyed a small fraction of the intended centrifuges and only slightly delayed Iran's enrichment.
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The amount of time it takes to hit these enrichment milestones ultimately depends on the quality and quantity of Iran's centrifuges.
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The restraints on Iran's centrifuges disappear after 10 years, and the limits on uranium enrichment go away five years after that.
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Iran expanded its stockpile of low enriched uranium beyond the nuclear deal's limit of 300 kilograms, conducted research that could enable it to build more advanced centrifuges, exceeded the previous limits on the level of enrichment, and started operating centrifuges in a hardened bunker near the city of Qom — but it stopped short of exiting the agreement entirely.
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Chen said that cheaper, low-tech centrifuges would be a boon to doctors and hospitals in areas where medical resources are limited.
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Second, Trump doesn't like that certain restrictions of the deal — like the ones on uranium enrichment and the use of centrifuges — end.
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The device, called the paperfuge, mimics the workings of traditional centrifuges that are routinely used for diagnosing infections like HIV and malaria.
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The virus prompted Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges to spin faster out of control and ultimately break--all without tripping any safety sensors.
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Those include limits on its stockpile of enriched uranium and the number of its centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, it has installed.
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This supplemental agreement should include restraining Iran's ballistic missiles program, extending sunset clauses on Iran's centrifuges, and constraining Iran's destabilizing regional behavior.
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Under the terms of the deal the Islamic Republic is allowed to spin the centrifuges at Fordow without injecting gas, Rouhani said.
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But in April, with the United States having pulled out of the deal, Tehran announced plans to use newer, more efficient centrifuges.
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Iran took another step away from the nuclear deal it signed in 2015 by injecting gas into centrifuges at its Fordow facility.
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Iran since has gone beyond the deal's stockpile and enrichment limits, as well as started using advanced centrifuges barred by the deal.
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In June 2010, news reports began appearing about the discovery of a computer worm targeting Iran's uranium enrichment program and their centrifuges.
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Germany said on Monday Iran's announced roll-out of modernised centrifuges jeopardises the accord and called on Tehran to return to it.
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The obvious problem is that we are not discussing glass and steel but centrifuges that could spin uranium to make new weapons.
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Tehran meanwhile signaled its resolve to expand its enrichment capability by detailing plans to build advanced centrifuges - the machines that enrich uranium.
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They turned them into inexpensive centrifuges that could allow health workers in impoverished areas to carry out certain blood tests with ease.
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One of the main achievements of the deal was Iran's agreement to dismantle its advanced IR-2M centrifuges, used to purify uranium.
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Kamalvandi did not specify how much uranium Iran might purify to the higher level, nor how many centrifuges it would consider restarting.
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The nuclear deal placed other restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, including its development of advanced centrifuges that can enrich uranium more quickly.
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Indeed, likely in coordination with Israel, the US unleashed the Stuxnet digital weapon on Iran's nuclear program, causing many centrifuges to fail.
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The nuclear deal only lets Iran accumulate enriched uranium with just over 5,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz.
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The clandestine effort — untaken with Israel — deployed a computer virus known as Stuxnet that destroyed Iranian centrifuges used in creating nuclear fuel.
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Iran previously has broken limits of its enrichment, its stockpiles and its centrifuges, as well as restarted enrichment at an underground facility.
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Reopening negotiations could also prompt Iran to restart its uranium centrifuges, putting the country back on a path to a nuclear weapon.
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Tehran recently announced that contrary to the terms of the 6900 nuclear deal it had put advanced centrifuges to work enriching uranium.
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And, of course, the nuclear sham deal did not stop the centrifuges from spinning or Iranian operatives from pursuing nuclear weapons components.
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Not only because he allowed Iran to keep 6,500 centrifuges, more than enough to produce a nuclear weapon over the next decade.
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The American operations, code-named Olympic Games and Nitro Zeus, succeeded in taking offline hundreds of Iranian centrifuges needed to purify uranium.
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The centrifuges themselves don't take up much floor space, so their plants have a much smaller physical footprint than gaseous diffusion facilities.
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Iran exported nearly all of its uranium and dismantled the majority of its centrifuges as well as its reactor capable of producing plutonium.
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"If you have a smaller number of very advanced centrifuges, it&aposs easier for you to enrich in a secret location," Stewart said.
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The US destroyed nuclear centrifuges, the Iranians threatened dams, and bled tens of millions of dollars from private institutions caught in the crossfire.
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The report did however flag up questions about the number of advanced centrifuges Iran is allowed, which is loosely defined in the deal.
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In demonstrations, the paperfuge was able to centrifuge blood at about 20,000 RPM—a speed comparable to those exerted by conventional benchtop centrifuges.
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It also informed the U.N. nuclear watchdog of "tentative" plans to produce the feedstock for centrifuges, which are the machines that enrich uranium.
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An announcement by an unidentified official at the time, saying that the centrifuges were being disassembled, was officially denied but confirmed weeks later.
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Stuxnet, described as "the world's first digital weapon," made computers at an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility to go haywire, destroying hundreds of centrifuges.
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It has said it could take new steps in 60 days, including restarting dismantled centrifuges and purifying uranium to a sharply higher threshold.
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It turns Fordow into a "nuclear, physics and technology center" where centrifuges are used for purposes other than enrichment, like producing stable isotopes.
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They spent their days whirling around in centrifuges or enduring extended periods of confinement in small spaces, to prepare them for test flights.
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Iranian scientists, led by veterans of the secret nuclear weapons program, developed centrifuges able to enrich uranium at four times the 2015 rate.
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Once he took over at Renaissance, he stopped filtering and dismantled the centrifuges; he wanted the winemaking to be less intense, less worried.
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The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only 5,060 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges to enrich uranium by rapidly spinning uranium hexafluoride gas.
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Making enriched uranium requires the use of centrifuges, devices that spin uranium really fast to separate U-235 from the less potent stuff.
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On a recent evening, the proprietors, Dave Arnold and Don Lee, were investigating a mysterious spill from one of their many patented centrifuges.
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More advanced centrifuges would allow Iran to more rapidly enrich uranium, which could allow it to develop a potential nuclear weapon even faster.
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The most famous such attack was the Stuxnet worm, which destroyed the centrifuges that enriched uranium at the Natanz nuclear site in Iran.
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Rouhani said Tuesday that Iran would inject uranium gas into an additional 1,044 IR-1 centrifuges that had been spinning empty at Fordo.
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Inspectors are to monitor centrifuges and related infrastructure for 15 years, verify inventory for 20 years and monitor uranium mines for 25 years.
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The Iranians, reverse engineering the technology they bought from Mr. Khan, not only manufactured their own centrifuges, but also mastered the cascade technology.
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Iran was finally freed from crippling sanctions in exchange for shuttering thousands of centrifuges and getting rid of most of its enriched uranium.
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He also told the semiofficial Iranian Students' News Agency that Tehran would increase its capacity to produce uranium hexafluoride, a feedstock for centrifuges.
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"All of the installed centrifuges had been prepared for testing with UF6," though none of them were being tested with UF6 on Sept.
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Iran will step up its work on developing new centrifuges for enriching uranium, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, according to The Guardian.
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During inspections in 2003, the Americans discovered Libya had centrifuges that could be used to produce highly enriched uranium — fuel for a bomb.
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And ultimately that absence of trust will destroy the glue of American society the way the Stuxnet computer worm destroyed those Iranian centrifuges.
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The IAEA verified on September 25 that Iran had begun enriching with advanced centrifuges, but in much smaller numbers than the IR-1s.
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Iran President Hassan Rouhani said his country is working on developing new, advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.
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And rather than dismantling Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the deal preserved it intact and even permitted research and development of far more advanced centrifuges.
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But under the deal, Iran has placed two-thirds of its centrifuges in storage and relinquished about 95 percent of its uranium stockpile.
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The agency said that all the centrifuges had been "prepared for testing," but had not been tested at the time of the Sept.
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Created by the United States government and Israel, the worm was used in 2010 to destroy centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility.
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Introduced via flash drive to the Natanz Nuclear Facility, this virus was co-deployed by the U.S. and Israel to physically destroy centrifuges.
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If these research reactors became operational, or if Iran brought many more "bread and butter" centrifuges online, the country's breakout time would drop.
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Centrifuges are the key variable in how long it takes to enrich a usable quantity of uranium, whether for fuel or for weapons.
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Chen and his team are already trying to test out their spinner centrifuges in the African country of Malawi, conducting blood tests on site.
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Still, there's controversy: The restrictions on Iran's centrifuges disappear after 10 years, and the limits on uranium enrichment go away five years after that.
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Iran will keep 210,230 first-generation centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment plant, which will be converted into a nuclear, physics and technology center.
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The deal says Iran can continue to conduct enrichment research and development without accumulating enriched uranium, including work with certain types of advanced centrifuges.
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It also dismantled most of the centrifuges it had been using to make enriched uranium and eliminated almost all its stockpile of the stuff.
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Stuxnet, a computer worm written by the Americans and the Israelis that attacked centrifuges in Iran's uranium-enrichment programme, exploited five zero-day flaws.
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According to the New York Times, that will include conducting research on centrifuges that can make nuclear fuel, and curbing nuclear inspections from observers.
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The Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, disrupted thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran.
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Under the agreement, Iran pledged to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% and significantly scale back its number of installed centrifuges.
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If Washington pulled out of the deal, Tehran could theoretically restart those centrifuges and renew its push for nuclear weapons — while keeping the money.
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Despite international condemnation, sanctions, and sabotage, Iran grew its capabilities to nearly 20,000 installed centrifuges, with plans to continue expanding and advancing its technology.
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"Increasing the capacity and production process is being carried out with the same number of already installed centrifuges in Natanz (enrichment plant)," Kamalvandi said.
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The pact allows Iran only to spin the centrifuges at Fordow, located inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom, without injecting gas.
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He said an engineer who assembled centrifuges for Iran's nuclear program agreed to defect on one condition: that he pursue a doctorate at MIT.
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"We are aware of their sensitiveness toward the Fordo facility and those centrifuges," President Hassan Rouhani was quoted as saying in a televised speech.
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The pact allows Iran only to spin the centrifuges at Fordow, located inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom, without injecting gas.
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Time will tell if the behavior employed by a savvy real estate tycoon to develop golf courses will achieve the shuttering of uranium centrifuges.
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The nuclear deal had ordered the Fordo site to be a research center, but it is now home to 1,000 centrifuges, the AP said.
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An official says Iran will be notifying the U.N. of its plans, and will assemble a "new generation of centrifuges" if the deal collapses.
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The cyberattack was Operation Olympic Games, a joint United States-Israeli effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear centrifuges with a computer virus sometimes called Stuxnet.
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The centrifuges are packed up, the sanctions are lifted, and President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is now a fact on the ground.
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Tehran was also tasked with dismantling thousands of centrifuges and shipping overseas its stockpile of enriched uranium, much of which it has reportedly accomplished.
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Nephew notes that any externally-imposed nuclear requirements, like a cap on the number of permitted uranium centrifuges or enriched uranium, could do this.
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The regime is also engaging in nuclear blackmail, enriching more uranium and installing new centrifuges, and threatening once again to advance its nuclear program.
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At the start of his first term, he authorized the Stuxnet cyberattack that destroyed about a thousand of Iran's centrifuges used for enriching uranium.
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Most of Tehran's centrifuges had been dismantled under the 153 agreement, and 97 percent of the country's nuclear fuel had been shipped to Russia.
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It turns Fordow into a "nuclear, physics and technology centre" where centrifuges are used for purposes other than enrichment, such as producing stable isotopes.
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That gas is what scientists put inside of centrifuges to make enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear power plants or in atomic bombs.
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The United States, and possibly Israel, are widely believed to have been behind "Stuxnet", a computer virus that destroyed nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010.
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Iran has rendered its heavy water reactor inert, drastically reduced its number of centrifuges, and permitted IAEA inspectors to carry out rigorous and intrusive inspections.
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Under last year's nuclear deal, Iran is allowed to conduct certain atomic research and development activities beyond uranium enrichment with its elderly IR-1 centrifuges.
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Mass production of advanced centrifuges, if carried out, would give Iran a decided advantage if it wanted to shorten a rush to a nuclear weapon.
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Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up enrichment of uranium to 20% purity in a move away from the nuclear accord.
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This week, Iran announced its "fourth step" away from the deal — injecting uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges that had been kept empty under the deal.
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Under the terms of the nuclear deal, Tehran cannot use IR-6 centrifuges, among other models, to produce enriched uranium for at least ten years.
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The problem is that the U.S. also uses cyberwarfare (to destroy Iranian centrifuges and, apparently, North Korean missiles), and we don't want to constrain ourselves.
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Simply destroying Iranian enrichment plants would not be enough to end the nuclear weapons program if Iran could just build centrifuges for new ones quickly.
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Last week, Mr. Rouhani sought to secure just that by announcing Iran would restart the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material again.
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By themselves, an acceleration of work on high-speed centrifuges and limits on international inspections would not necessarily take Iran closer to producing a weapon.
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They spent more than a year trying to determine why their centrifuges were exploding, and spreading radioactive material inside the plant's giant underground enrichment hall.
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Iran may also install new centrifuges that enrich uranium at a far faster rate than the old models that were dismantled in 2015 and 2016.
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Incremental nuclear escalation as a strategy of persuasion Iran's recent installation and use of advanced centrifuges breaches the JCPOA's associated centrifuge research and development plan.
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Iran said last month it had begun injecting gas into IR-6 centrifuges -- a process that could ultimately be used to develop a nuclear weapon.
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Moreover, it has also been reported that Tehran has found new ways to conduct additional mechanical testing of centrifuges, in clear violation of the JCPOA.
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" Probably within 12 months, he says, "Iran may well have, with their now I think 3,000 centrifuges, enough fissile material to create a nuclear bomb.
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We know from the code variations that the version of the code that got out into the wild was after the centrifuges had blown up.
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Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the AEOI, announced last week that Iran had begun work on a facility to construct advanced centrifuges at Natanz.
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There were petri dishes full of weedy-looking hops, yeast strains spinning in centrifuges, and a secret department devoted to the DNA fingerprinting of hops.
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Under the deal, the Iranian government agreed to three key things: Reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds (centrifuges are tube-shaped machines used to enrich uranium, the material necessary for nuclear power); slashing its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%; and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67% -- enough to continue powering parts of the country's energy needs, but not enough to build a nuclear bomb.
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But if it falls apart, nothing would prevent Iran from immediately using these advanced centrifuges — and potentially raising the risks of a confrontation with the West.
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It hired the first known researcher to discover Stuxnet, the malware widely believed to be a joint US–Israeli operation credited with damaging Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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For example, they said, he gave an estimate of how many gas centrifuges - devices used in enriching uranium - Iran would need to accomplish its nuclear goals.
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The Stuxnet computer virus — discovered in 2010 — destroyed almost 20 percent of Iran's nuclear centrifuges before the Iranians figured out what was going on and recovered.
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It's based on a deeply rigorous system of inspections, one that has repeatedly confirmed that Iran is not, in fact, cheating by, say, restarting prohibited centrifuges.
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The ministry gave details of 32 materials, technologies and forms of equipment with potential use related to weapons of mass destruction, including particle accelerators and centrifuges.
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Iran started to inject uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground nuclear facility, further distancing itself from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
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He said that Iran had "failed to meet our expectations in its operations of advanced centrifuges," and "intimidated" international inspectors into not using their full authority.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday announced Iran will begin developing more advanced centrifuges in what represents its third step away from the 2015 nuclear deal.
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Centrifuges are machines that enrich uranium, a process that can purify the element to the level needed for use in the core of a nuclear weapon.
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By reducing their stockpile to less than 300 kilograms and their operating centrifuges by nearly 85033 percent, the Iranian break-out time became roughly one year.
|
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"Zero Days" begins with the true story of a cyberattack against a nuclear power plant in Iran in which uranium-processing centrifuges were programmed to explode.
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Iran agreed to mothball for at least a decade the majority of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium and sharply reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile.
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A. The agency has a detailed accounting of Iran's sharply reduced supply of nuclear fuel, working centrifuges and other equipment, and is empowered to monitor them.
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Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear weapons expert at Stanford University, was shown something totally unexpected: 2,000 gleaming new centrifuges used to enrich uranium for use in bombs.
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Last week the Islamic Republic said it would exceed the deal's limits on research and development, the term applied to Iran's use of technologically advanced centrifuges.
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But, on January 5th, two days after the killing of Suleimani, Iran said that it would no longer limit the number of centrifuges for enriching uranium.
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Iran will not respect any limits established in the 2015 nuclear deal on the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges, according to a state-run television broadcast.
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Such activity is not tied to a single place, as Iran's centrifuges were, and the militants can take advantage of remarkably advanced, low-cost encryption technologies.
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"Iran will begin gas injection into the Fordow centrifuges as of tomorrow," Rouhani announced in a televised address Tuesday, according to state-run IRNA news agency.
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And it will be better positioned to deploy these centrifuges in much larger numbers when it is permitted to do so roughly eight years from now.
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The Stuxnet computer virus — discovered in 2010 — destroyed almost 20 percent of Iran's nuclear centrifuges and infiltrated a Russian nuclear power plant, according to security experts.
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Related: This Was the Year That Iran Finally Started to Come in From the Cold After the deal was inked, Iran began to dismantle its centrifuges.
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"Centrifuges are the only [enrichment process] today that makes economic sense," said R. Scott Kemp, director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy at MIT.
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First, practically: if Iran is enriching way more uranium at lower levels, it may have more of the centrifuges in action that are needed to enrich it.
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Following the nuclear deal, Iran drastically reduced the number of centrifuges - machines that enrich uranium - installed at Fordow, and kept just over 1,000 there for research purposes.
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The IAEA said Iran had installed 33 advanced IR-6 centrifuges, machines that can enrich uranium, although only 10 had been tested with uranium feedstock so far.
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Under the terms of the nuclear agreement with Iran, two-thirds of the centrifuges inside Fordo have been removed in recent months, along with all nuclear material.
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At the point when it signed the deal, Iran had amassed a much larger stockpile of LEU—ten tonnes—and had many more centrifuges up and running.
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"Iran has built very advanced centrifuges, which do not comply with the agreement," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told a news conference in response to a question.
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Under the deal's terms, Iran can only enrich at Natanz, and can only operate a maximum of 5,060 older-model centrifuges (rather than newer, more efficient ones).
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In his announcement, President Hassan Rouhani did not say whether the centrifuges, which are at its nuclear facility in Fordo, would be used to produce enriched uranium.
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The diplomat said these rotor tubes were for centrifuges of the IR-4, 6 and 8 types, adding this was not in conflict with the nuclear deal.
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Under the deal, the restrictions on Iran's centrifuges go away after 10 years (in 2025) and the limitations on uranium enrichment disappear five years after that (2030).
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Separately, the IAEA's report also confirmed that Iran had been enriching uranium and using centrifuges in Fordo, an underground site in the country's northwest, the AP reported.
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In a display filmed by state television, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran turned on 2628 IR-28500 centrifuges, bringing Iran's total to 6900.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on September 4 announced Iran would begin developing more advanced centrifuges in what represented its third step away from the 2015 nuclear deal.
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But when 164 centrifuges are arranged in cascades, with one stage of enrichment feeding into the next, enough uranium can be enriched to produce an atomic bomb.
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Kamalvandi said options included enriching uranium to 20% purity or beyond, and restarting IR-2 M centrifuges that were dismantled as one of the deal's core aims.
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Germany, one of the signatories to the deal, reacted to Iran's decision on the centrifuges by saying it was not too late for Iran to change course.
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Last month, Mr. Rouhani said Iran would stop abiding by parts of the agreement, and would resume the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material.
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In storage, it also has many other centrifuges that its technicians could in theory fit into the deep bunkers of the Natanz plant, in the Iranian desert.
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Instead of using fingers and rakes to remove unwanted materials, the city now uses expensive machines to pulverize the material and separate plastics with paddles and centrifuges.
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Under the nuclear deal, it would have been many years before Iran could increase enrichment, the size of its uranium stockpile or the number of its centrifuges.
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The specific commitments from Iran included reducing their uranium stockpile by 98% and drastically lowering the number of centrifuges installed at nuclear two facilities: Natanz and Fordo.
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Medical teams visiting rural communities in Madagascar must tote heavy equipment and supplies such as liquid nitrogen, centrifuges, 40-pound generators, and several weeks' supply of rice.
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Cyberattacks can range from election interference, to the manipulation of financial or medical data, to the physical destruction of equipment, whether nuclear centrifuges or entire power grids.
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Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had agreed to dismantle a reactor, limit centrifuges, export uranium stockpiles, and allow international inspections, in exchange for ending economic sanctions.
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A required ingredient list is being lobbied for in the European Union, but that won't stop the use of un-"natural" techniques like reverse osmosis or centrifuges.
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There reportedly is debate about whether the "roughly 10" centrifuges of one type Iran is permitted to test means up to 11, or as high as 85033.
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The deal caps the level of purity to which Iran can enrich uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, at 215%, far below the 215% of weapons grade.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Tuesday Iran would "resume uranium enrichment" at its Fordow plant and begin injecting uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges, Iranian state media reports.
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Nor has the North started disposing of its fissile materials or the facilities, such as centrifuges and a nuclear reactor, that have been used to produce them.
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Iran announced on Saturday it mobilized a chain of advanced centrifuges to accelerate uranium enrichment — breaching the 2015 nuclear deal for the third time, reports Al-Jazeera.
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Furthermore, the country could only operate around 22015,22015 of the basic centrifuges needed to enrich uranium ore, far short of the 19,000 it had before the treaty.
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The news agency said that the International Atomic Energy, a global nuclear energy watchdog, had found that Iran breached the JCPOA by enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges.
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The deal caps the level of purity to which Iran can enrich uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, at 215%, far below the 215% of weapons grade.
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In addition to what's pictured, Yongbyon is also home to a uranium enrichment facility, which puts the element into centrifuges to make it usable for a bomb.
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"I am telling you (American leaders), if you pressure us, we will mass-produce IR8 advanced centrifuges," Rouhani said in the speech marking Iran's National Nuclear Day.
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Under the deal, the Iranian government agreed to three key things: Reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds (centrifuges are tube-shaped machines used to enrich uranium, the material necessary for nuclear power); slashing its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%; and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67% -- enough to continue powering parts of the country's energy needs, but not enough to ever build a nuclear bomb.
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Officials also have appeared in state media video and pictures at Isfahan with advanced IR-2M, IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges labeled in English in the background.
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The United States, with help from Israel, temporarily set back Iran's nuclear program via a computer virus called Stuxnet, which destroyed thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
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Inside, the lab is meticulously neat: rows of spotless tables are covered in bottles with orange rubber caps, all labeled with orange duct tape, and small gray centrifuges.
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But it was intended to give us a little more leeway to deal with that bad behaviour, not having to worry about centrifuges spinning away in underground facilities.
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Without it, Iran may seek to return to the old limited inspections regime, to build new centrifuges, to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade and to miniaturise warheads.
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In 2006, power supplies for the country's centrifuges blew up; it turned out they had been diverted, and tinkered with, by the United States before they were delivered.
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This is a dizzying collection of 45 centrifuges, from the smallest to the largest:A small water-motor laboratory centrifuge (L), and an electric centrifuge (R), from the 1900s.
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Under the terms of the deal, Iran has agreed to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% and significantly scale back its number of installed centrifuges.
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Simultaneously, the United States and Israel sabotaged Iran's nuclear program, knocking out thousands of centrifuges via the Stuxnet computer virus and eliminating at least four key nuclear scientists.
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They argue that they have abided by the deal, stopping their uranium enrichment program, permanently destroying their only water reactor in Arak along with many of their centrifuges.
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Iran said on Monday it was developing advanced centrifuges capable of refining uranium much faster than the IR1s, seen by many experts as antiquated and prone to breakdown.
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Salehi earlier in the same state TV interview said that Tehran is now operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges in violation of its atomic deal with world powers.
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That's a little hard to believe after how it helped Iran in 2012 remediate and fix their centrifuges after the Flame virus and Stuxnet worm had been discovered.
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Tehran has responded by enriching uranium beyond set limits and threatening to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up enrichment well above the level deemed normal for electricity generation.
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The Kangsong plant is suspected of housing many thousands of centrifuges — tall machines that spin at supersonic speeds to concentrate the rare form of uranium used in bombs.
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North Korea has not started disposing of its fissile materials or nuclear facilities, such as a nuclear reactor and centrifuges, that have been used to produce the weapons.
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Under that pact, Iran is currently spinning a small number of nuclear centrifuges, though it had to ship 803 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country.
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Stuxnet was a joint American-Israeli operation that successfully infiltrated Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, and used malicious code to destroy a fifth of Iran's uranium centrifuges in 2010.
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The high point was Operation Olympic Games, under which the most deadly computer viruses of the time were created, which caused devastating damage to Iran's uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
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Centrifuges, which change the chemical properties of uranium to separate out the most fissile isotope – a material capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction called U-235.
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It should give up 14,2023 of its 20,000 centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium, and agree to enrich it only to levels unsuitable in weapons for 15 years.
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After the Soleimani assassination, Iran stated that it will no longer abide by JCPOA restrictions on nuclear enrichment and the number and type of centrifuges it can develop.
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The sophisticated malware infected the plant's control systems forcing up to 1,000 of its centrifuges to spin out of control, hindering the ability to produce uranium for weapons.
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Earlier in September, an Iranian government spokesman had warned that Iran would grow its nuclear research and development aptitudes by installing and testing a series of advanced centrifuges.
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Even though Iran announced last year a new manufacturing facility for advanced centrifuges, it still would need time to build and install vast quantities of these newer machines.
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The deal made Tehran, among other things, sharply cut the number of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, it has in operation and slash its stock of enriched uranium.
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This process involves centrifuges for spinning, "super stronger shaking machines," and different chemical reagents to shear cells, spilling their DNA so it can be purified in a tube.
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For two years before it was discovered, it caused an estimated 103,000 Iranian centrifuges to malfunction and destroy themselves, setting back Iranian nuclear research by a year or more.
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With a blend of shyness and defiance, they displayed an astonishing spectacle: a hall with 20113,22011 brand-new centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, either for electricity or nuclear bombs.
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In 2009 and 2010, the U.S., working with Israel, is believed to have helped deploy what became known as Stuxnet, a cyber weapon designed to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
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Iran did agree to mothball most of the centrifuges used for enrichment, and to process the stuff only to a level far below what is required for a bomb.
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In 2011, he was tasked with building an infographic that would explain Stuxnet, the mysterious cyber-weapon, possibly American-Israeli, that wiped out a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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Artificial gravity can be simulated by the centripetal forces due to rotation, and centrifuges can help us train astronauts, make cotton candy, and a lot of things in between.
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It must reduce its level of uranium enrichment, dramatically reduce the size of its stockpile of enriched uranium, reduce the number of centrifuges, and agree to unfettered international inspections.
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The New York Times reported in 2012 that the unit was part of a collaboration between the U.S. and Israel that took out Iranian centrifuges spinning to purify uranium.
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It must reduce its level of uranium enrichment, drastically reduce the size of its stockpile of enriched uranium, reduce the number of centrifuges and agree to unfettered international inspections.
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Under the deal, Iran agreed to reduce the number of its centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,000 and its stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 85033,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms.
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The deal caps the level of purity to which Iran can enrich uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, at 215 percent, far below the 215 percent of weapons grade.
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This month it celebrated 28503 years since the U.S. embassy hostage crisis by unveiling new nuclear centrifuges and redoing anti-American murals at the site of the former embassy.
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It could reach this threshold sooner if it deploys more advanced centrifuges, as it has since September, or escalates further at the next 85033-day deadline in early January.
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Iran on Monday also threatened to take further steps in 60 days, including possibly restarting centrifuges that were dismantled under the nuclear deal or enriching uranium to 20 percent.
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Like Macron, Democratic candidates could declare that the limitations on the numbers and types of centrifuges, the level of enrichment, and the stockpile of enriched material, must be extended.
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Iran on Monday also threatened to take further steps in 60 days, including possibly restarting centrifuges that were dismantled under the nuclear deal or enriching uranium to 21625 percent.
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran has begun working on infrastructure for building advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility, Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said on Tuesday.
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In January they shipped 98 percent of their nuclear fuel out of the country, disabled a plutonium reactor and took thousands of centrifuges, which enrich uranium, out of service.
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One was a joint American and Israeli effort that produced the Stuxnet computer worm, a program that appeared to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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Stuxnet was programmed to make the uranium enrichment centrifuges spin faster than they were supposed to, causing them to get out of control to the point of damaging them.
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Thus, as the Institute for Science and International Security has documented, Tehran has repeatedly violated the letter of the JCPOA by engaging in research and development of advanced centrifuges.
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Fighting disinformation is especially hard: Cybercommand officials say they are far more comfortable turning off Iranian centrifuges or sabotaging North Korean missiles than they are waging counter-information wars.
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Under the deal, Iran is allowed limited research and development on advanced centrifuges, which accelerate the production of fissile material that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
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Stuxnet, a strain of malware thought to have been created by American and Israeli experts, temporarily stalled Iran's nuclear program by sabotaging centrifuges used to refine weapons-grade uranium.
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He added that Iran had also informed the agency it would modify lines of research centrifuges so that enriched uranium was produced, which is not allowed under the deal.
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"The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges," the government said in a statement Sunday.
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That is why it would probably take Iran a long while to resume production: It does not have the uranium needed to keep a larger number of centrifuges running.
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Iran's latest move, which it described Sunday as its fifth and final step in reducing its commitments to the agreement, was to abandon limits on the "number of centrifuges."
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A frenetic energy took over the lab: postdoctoral researchers and graduate students stayed late into the evening, wolfing down takeout dinners and shuttling samples between the centrifuges and incubators.
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The U.S. joined forces with Israel to create malware known as a worm to destroy nuclear centrifuges, only to see it run amok due to an overly ambitious timetable.
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Under the deal, Iran is allowed limited research and development on advanced centrifuges, which accelerate the production of fissile material that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
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Since the NSA's infamous Stuxnet malware started exploding Iranian centrifuges, hacker attacks that disrupt big, physical systems have moved out of the realm of Die Hard sequels and into reality.
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The company wrote that it was "either the same [group] or working closely together" with the developers of the sophisticated and stealthy Stuxnet, malware created to sabotage Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
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The technology of Stuxnet — the infamous malware, publicly identified in 2010, that destroyed Iranian nuclear centrifuges and may be the most prominent example of a cyberattack with clear physical consequences.
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It sometimes switches into more traditional motion graphics like a diagram of the centrifuges, or overlays video onto giant metallic pillars, but you're almost always supposed to "be" Stuxnet itself.
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The infamous virus, widely believed to be a creation of the United States and Israel, was unleashed on Iranian nuclear centrifuges as part of a government operation codenamed Olympic Games.
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Rouhani was speaking as Tehran marked National Nuclear Technology Day and unveiled what it said were its latest nuclear achievements including a nuclear battery and centrifuges for the oil industry.
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The attack on Fordo appears to have been designed to be more blunt and obvious — a straightforward strike that would destroy the circuitry that powered the centrifuges and their controllers.
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Iran has complied with a deadline under the 2015 accords to remove nuclear equipment called centrifuges from one of its atomic sites, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.
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Tehran has already received tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for shipping out a large chunk of its enriched uranium and taking thousands of centrifuges offline.
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In November, there were similarly conflicting reports about the disassembling of thousands of enrichment centrifuges, both in the main enrichment plant of Natanz and the underground bunker complex of Fordo.
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Stuxnet used so-called Zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows to burrow into the targeted SCADA systems used to operate some nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz research site in Iran.
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Iran was developing infrastructure for building advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility, Ali Akbar Salehi, director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation said in a news conference broadcast on state television.
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Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told state news media that 30 more advanced centrifuges had been put into use, bringing the total to 60.
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Under the agreement between Iran and world powers, Tehran is only allowed to enrich uranium with just over 5,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, widely seen as antiquated.
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It could then likely reinstall centrifuges disengaged under deal and could race toward development of a nuclear device, a process that experts believe could take only a year or so.
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His remarks, carried live on Iranian state television, came a day after Tehran's nuclear program chief said the country had doubled the number of advanced IR-2500 centrifuges in operation.
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That operation was not detected by the Iranians for years, until an accidental release of the computer code made it obvious that its centrifuges were exploding because of a cyberattack.
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Moreover, depending on how far Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program has progressed, Iran's development of advanced centrifuges — which is permitted under the nuclear deal — could be useful to it as well.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran announced Tuesday it would inject uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges that had previously been kept empty under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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Qasem Soleimani, in January, Iran announced it would no longer be bound by certain aspects of the nuclear deal and specifically pointed to uranium enrichment and the number of centrifuges.
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Later, when these centrifuges were inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were found to contain traces of highly enriched uranium, which must have come from the Pakistani program.
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Iran has said that, starting on Friday, it would begin developing centrifuges to speed up the enrichment of uranium, which can produce fuel for power plants or for atomic bombs.
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Rather than lifting sanctions on Iran, allowing it to retain its nuclear infrastructure and develop more advanced centrifuges, a better deal could have ramped up pressure on the Islamic Republic.
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Even more recently, the mullahs have taken a supposed "research" facility at Fordow and started enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges, an activity that must have been planned years in advance.
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Rouhani's remarks suggested Iran was developing a new centrifuge, the IR-9, violating the deal which specifies the centrifuges Iran can use and making no mention of an IR-9.
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Iran's announcement means that it will no longer observe any limits on the number of centrifuges it can install to enrich uranium or the level to which it enriches it.
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The announcement Monday that Iran would double its advanced centrifuges coincided with the 40th anniversary of the US embassy siege -- when Iranian students took 90 people hostage, including 66 Americans.
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The sophisticated virus even altered the plant's digital displays to deceive plant operators into thinking all was normal, even as the virus was causing massive damage to nearly 1,000 centrifuges.
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They were taught not to be afraid of certain sounds and vibrations and were placed in centrifuges to simulate rocket launch and test the effect of centrifugal forces on their bodies.
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Tehran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites within the last few months, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia.
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The nuclear facility was apparently high on the priority list for the US and Israel after the Stuxnet virus destroyed 1,000 centrifuges and halted activities at the separate Natanz nuclear facility.
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Iran has already removed two-thirds of the centrifuges in Fordo since an agreement was reached this summer, and it's banned from conducting nuclear work there for the next 15 years.
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In short, the agreement made Iran limit uranium enrichment to 6603 percent and decommission about 14,000 of its centrifuges, allowing just roughly 5,000 of Iran's first-generation units to keep spinning.
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Adding to Middle East tensions, Iran started to inject uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground nuclear facility, further distancing itself from a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
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The deal banned enrichment at Fordow but allowed Iran to keep around 1,000 centrifuges there, turning the site into a "nuclear, physics, and technology center" where no nuclear materials are present.
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Under the 280 deal, the Islamic Republic is only allowed to enrich uranium with just over 290,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, widely seen as antiquated and breakdown-prone.
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The Gulf Arabs, in particular, remain convinced that Iran has only postponed its nuclear ambitions, and will use the next 15 years to develop more advanced centrifuges and missile delivery systems.
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In the past two weeks it has begun enriching with two large, 164-machine cascades - which were removed under the deal - of the more advanced IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuges.
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In September, Iran launched an audacious attack against Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, and this month, it announced that it would begin injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at a fortified nuclear facility.
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According to anonymous sources, those nation-states were the United States and Israel, whose military intelligence sought to infiltrate Iran's nuclear facility at Natanz and and take down uranium-enriching centrifuges.
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Moreover, by requiring Iran to rip out over 13,000 centrifuges and cap its stockpile of enriched uranium, the deal ensures that timeframe will remain in place for well over a decade.
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Iran since June has been incrementally rolling back its obligations under the 2015 deal, stepping up its uranium enrichment and using advanced centrifuges that bring it closer to bomb-making capability.
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T.A.O.'s most public success was an operation against Iran called Olympic Games, in which implants in the network of the Natanz nuclear plant caused centrifuges enriching uranium to self-destruct.
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The N.S.A. used sophisticated malware to destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges — and then saw the same code proliferate around the world, doing damage to random targets, including American business giants like Chevron.
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Iran gave away about 97 percent of its low-enriched uranium, destroyed 13,000 of its 19,000 centrifuges and pledged to incapacitate a heavy-water facility intended to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
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Iran remains a party to the deal—for now—and announced only that it will no longer observe the agreement's limitations on the number of centrifuges it is permitted to operate.
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In short, the agreement made Iran limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent and decommission about 14,000 of its centrifuges, allowing just roughly 5,000 of Iran's first-generation units to keep spinning.
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It agreed to reduce the number of its centrifuges, the tube-shaped machines that are used to enrich uranium, by two-thirds, and to slash its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%.
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Ali Akbar Velayati was quoted Wednesday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency as saying Iran is "capable to spin centrifuges for enrichment" to higher levels should it choose to do so.
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Though there is some precedent: The US and Israel are widely believed responsible for infecting Iranian nuclear sites with the "Stuxnet" computer worm, which caused centrifuges to " tear themselves apart" in 2010.
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The Iran nuclear deal dealt only partially with fissile material, allowing Tehran to retain critical technologies and infrastructure for the future – including the ability to continue spinning centrifuges and advanced centrifuge technology.
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It wasn&apost clear whether the centrifuges displayed were working models of the IR-83M, IR-4 and IR-6, though they resembled pictures of the three previously circulated by Iranian media.
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Iran's uranium stockpiles have been reduced by over 95 percent, its centrifuges by over 60 percent and its ability to enrich uranium has been capped far below the threshold for nuclear weapons.
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In an effort to overcome these hurdles, scientists have tried to create centrifuges from salad spinners and manual egg beaters, but neither kitchen item has proven capable of producing the required speeds.
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Iran on Monday threatened to restart deactivated centrifuges and step up its enrichment of uranium to 20% in a move that further threatens the 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned last year.
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Iran threatened to restart deactivated centrifuges on Monday and step up its enrichment of uranium to 20% in a move that further threatens the 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned last year.
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Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, has repeatedly argued that the "unjust sanctions" were counterproductive, noting that Iran's number of centrifuges and its fuel stockpile expanded as the economic noose tightened.
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The most famous cyberattack on a nuclear facility was done by the United States and Israel: the effort to destroy and disable nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran.
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GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran has between 3,000 and 4,000 active centrifuges, still within the limit allowed under the nuclear deal with world powers, the speaker of Iran's parliament Ali Larijani said on Wednesday.
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The rare announcement of specific data on the nuclear program, reported by the Tasnim news agency, came days after Iran's nuclear chief said it had completed a facility to build advanced centrifuges.
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Nobody Really Knows Researchers with ESET say Industroyer/CrashOverride is the biggest threat to industrial control systems since Stuxnet, the worm that damaged centrifuges used in Iran's nuclear program back in 33.
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But as soon as the time limited restrictions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on uranium enrichment and deployment of advanced centrifuges expire, the path toward them will open again.
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Iran on Monday threatened to restart deactivated centrifuges and step up its enrichment of uranium to 4503% in a move that further threatens the 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned last year.
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Tehran also informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog that polices restrictions placed on its activities under the deal, of "tentative" plans to produce the feedstock for centrifuges.
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In another breach of the deal, Iran announced Wednesday that it would begin enriching uranium with centrifuges at the country's Fordow nuclear site, which is built into the side of a mountain.
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In terms of progress made on their efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, whether through centrifuges or -- or, you know, at their various facilities, that to me sounds like a separate question.
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The deal allowed Iran to enrich uranium with just over 5,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuge machines and the nation was allowed to use advance centrifuges for research purposes only.
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After all, it would require a near quadrupling of the nation's enrichment in roughly a month, which is hard to do when not that many of the country's centrifuges are in operation.
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In November, Tehran announced that the country would begin injecting uranium gas into its 1,044 centrifuges at its Fordow plant, a move that could ultimately be used to develop a nuclear weapon.
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"The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges," the Iranian government said in a statement, per the Times.
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Other escalations might include: pulling mothballed centrifuges out of storage to increase the amount of enrichment it can do; restarting enrichment at Fordow, an even deeper-buried and thus harder-to-bomb plant.
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And it looks like that day may be getting closer: a spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said Monday that the agency may increase the enrichment level to 20 percent or reinstall centrifuges.
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Several hundred feet down, in two cavernous halls, neat rows of centrifuges spin uranium gas to produce fissile isotopes, which could be used for nuclear energy—or, if concentrated enough, a nuclear bomb.
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Under that deal, in exchange for the lifting of Western economic sanctions, Iran agreed that no fissile material — the makings of bomb fuel — would be put in the centrifuges spinning at the site.
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But with feedstock gas entering its centrifuges, the facility, built inside a mountain to withstand any air strikes, will move from the permitted status of research plant to being an active nuclear site.
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Middle East tensions offered some support, as Iran started to inject uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground nuclear facility, further distancing itself from a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
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Iran said on Monday it had launched a new batch of advanced centrifuges to accelerate uranium enrichment, further reducing compliance with the deal following the withdrawal of its arch-foe the United States.
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Libya's pursuit of nuclear technology seems to have escalated around 1997 with close assistance from Khan, and further escalated in 2000 with the acquisition of centrifuges from Pakistan and installation of various components.
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In fact, the United States is the only country ever to launch an actual cyberwar — when the Obama administration used a cyberattack to destroy thousands of centrifuges, used for nuclear enrichment, in Iran.
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The Iranians kept their nuclear centrifuges off any network, and it did not stop the United States and Israel from putting malware in the system — but again, it was a single, central system.
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They have even created such cyberweapons as Stuxnet—the worm, reportedly designed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, that targeted computers associated with Iran's nuclear program and caused damage to hundreds of uranium centrifuges.
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While setting up his new administration, he was also learning the dark arts of cyberwar, descending into the Situation Room to oversee a complex American-Israeli offensive operation to disable Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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Most of us in this room would have difficulties, let's say, decrypting in some parts, even if we've all developed a certain knowledge and skill when it comes to centrifuges and heavy water.
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Iran's improved compliance this year in part has been "unintentional or accidental" because advanced uranium enrichment devices called centrifuges have broken during testing more often than expected, according to the think tank report.
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Iran says it could take new steps in the next two months, including restarting dismantled centrifuges and purifying uranium to a sharply higher threshold, unless it is allow to resume normal oil sales.
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Rather than ripping up the JCPOA and ramping up nuclear production, Iran has only talked about building up its stockpile of centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could be used to make a bomb.
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European diplomats in touch with senior officials in Tehran said Iran would most likely resume research on high-performance centrifuges used to produce nuclear fuel and put restrictions on nuclear inspections in Iran.
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Upping the stakes on that threat, the head of Iran's atomic agency said on Wednesday that the country has built a factory that can produce rotors for up to 60 centrifuges a day.
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The landmark 2015 deal between Iran and major powers allows Tehran to operate thousands of first-generation IR-1 centrifuges - machines that enrich uranium - but puts much stricter limits on more advanced models.
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During late-night rants, my fellow intelligence officers debunked the stories that the Iraqi government had access to African uranium, had developed special centrifuges or was driving biological-warfare trailers around the country.
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From 2006 to 2013 they installed 20,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at various locations, including an underground complex called Fordow dug secretly into the base of a mountain and intended to be bombproof.
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But if the nation starts down that road — and reassembles the thousands of centrifuges that spin at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium — the warning time to a bomb could be about three months.
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Under the terms of the nuclear deal, Iran had committed to not using advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, among other restrictions on its nuclear program, in exchange for the removal of strict sanctions.
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One high-profile example of such a case is Stuxnet, a computer worm that altered the spin rates and pressures of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, making the system spin out of control in 85033.
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Iran's nuclear chief on Monday hailed the country's fourth public violation of the 2015 deal: the operation of 60 centrifuges for uranium enrichment that are more powerful than those permitted under the accord.
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Centrifuges allow scientists to separate the two uranium isotopes because the heavier isotope—uranium-238—is pushed to the outside of the rapidly spinning machine while the uranium-235 clusters in the middle.
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DOJ also dropped international warrants against 14 fugitive Iranians — one of whom supplied U.S. components that powered the centrifuges of Iran's fledgling nuclear program; another provided components for IEDs used by militias in Iraq.
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Why it matters: At the center of the issue are American universities, which routinely navigate existing export controls that restrict the distribution of sensitive technologies like super-strong materials and certain types of centrifuges.
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The researchers I spoke to have considered or used money from companies like General Mills or Nabisco to buy new lab equipment like centrifuges and high-performance liquid chromatography systems for their university research.
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Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity as its next potential big moves away from the agreement that Washington abandoned last year.
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If the Stuxnet virus can cause Iranian centrifuges to fail, what, or who, can stop Vladimir Putin, or Kim Jong-un, or just some random anarchist from grabbing the wheel of your driverless car?
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The co-operation that Iran has shown in decommissioning its enrichment centrifuges, removing the core of its heavy-water reactor and shipping out most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile has surprised arms controllers.
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They have linked the United States and Israel to an attack that destroyed Iranian centrifuges, and the Chinese military and contractors to attacks that stole military and trade secrets from thousands of foreign entities.
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Since the deal was reached last July, Iran has, as required, removed and placed in I.A.E.A.-monitored storage two-thirds of the 19,000 centrifuges it used for uranium enrichment at a facility at Natanz.
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An Iranian newspaper associated with the Revolutionary Guard said Tehran may install advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility and begin enrichment at its Fordo facility, activities prohibited under the nuclear deal (The Associated Press).
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Tehran has already surpassed the limits set for "the purity to which it enriches uranium, its stock of enriched uranium and its ban on using advanced centrifuges for enrichment rather than research," Reuters reported.
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It was Mr. Dagan who managed Israel's side of perhaps the most sophisticated piece of sabotage the United States and Israel have ever jointly attempted: the yearslong cyberattacks meant to destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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Israel, Katz said, wants the nuclear agreement to be revised to remove an expiration date, and to impose tighter conditions to stop Tehran from developing new centrifuges used to make weapons-grade nuclear material.
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The Iranians have cut down on the number of centrifuges, limited their stockpile of enriched uranium, and done many other things that have made it much harder for them to build a nuclear bomb.
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Iran would have restarted the activity it froze during negotiations: enriching uranium, adding to its stockpile of six bombs-worth of nuclear material, installing additional centrifuges, and continuing construction on its heavy water reactor.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday it was concerned and disappointed by Iran's plan to take another step away from a 2015 nuclear deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up uranium enrichment.
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In June 2010, a computer virus called Stuxnet, which has been called "unprecedentedly masterful and malicious," was discovered to have targeted computers that ran Iran's nuclear program, reportedly destroying a fifth of its centrifuges.
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On Tuesday, however, Iran announced that it was preparing its nuclear facilities to resume large-scale uranium enrichment and had built a factory for constructing advanced centrifuges should Europe fail to preserve the deal.
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Under the deal, Iran must reduce its uranium stockpile by roughly 98%, phase out its centrifuges over the next 15 years, limit research activities, allow heightened inspections and ship spent fuel outside of the country.
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Under the deal, Iran must reduce its uranium stockpile by roughly 98%, phase out its centrifuges over the next 15 years, limit research activities, allow heightened inspections and ship spent fuel outside of the country.
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To go back a bit, think about how insane Stuxnet is, really: A virus sent all over the world in the hopes of eventually making its way into industrial software that eventually controls Iranian centrifuges.
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During the live state television interview at Natanz, a nuclear facility with underground bunkers protected from airstrikes, Salehi said a new workshop there that was nearly ready to open could build 60 centrifuges a day.
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It was not only sanctions that forced Iran to the table: the United States and Israel also developed one of the world's most sophisticated cyberweapons to destroy the centrifuges that Iran has now been dismantling.
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The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is known, has got Iran to mothball most of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges and redesign its nuclear reactor at Arak to produce much less plutonium.
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If Iran were to shrug off the nuclear deal entirely, it could take thousands of old centrifuges out of storage, install them underground and build up a huge stock of uranium enriched to higher levels.
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Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity as its next potential big moves away from a 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned last year.
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Under the deal, Iran must reduce its uranium stockpile by roughly 1.33%, phase out its centrifuges over the next 15 years, limit research activities, allow heightened inspections and ship spent fuel outside of the country.
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Want to feel what it's like to be…Read more ReadCentrifuges can be sorted out by their function: centrifuges are used in commercial applications, in laboratories, for aeronautics and astronautics testing, , geotechnical research and more.
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With the help of portable media to reach an "air gapped" system with no direct or indirect connections to the internet, the attackers were able to destroy about 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.
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Mr Albright is particularly worried about reports that Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation has been shopping on the sly for carbon fibre, a material it would need if it were planning to build advanced uranium centrifuges.
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What put me in mind, in the early going, of brushed-steel surfaces and lonely centrifuges becomes something warmer and more elegiac as Artis's death nears and the enormity of Ross's loss comes into view.
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Under the JCPOA, Iran cannot have more than 5,060 centrifuges operating and cannot use more advanced models until 2025, and then would have had to slowly introduce them and explain why they were doing so.
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To be clear, a limited set of hacking tools can be considered 'cyberweapons,' such as the joint US-Israeli piece of malware Stuxnet, which tampered with Iranian centrifuges and slowed down the country's nuclear program.
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It slashed centrifuges by two-thirds; virtually eliminated its uranium stockpile; capped enrichment levels at 3.7 percent, a long way from bomb grade; cut off a plutonium route to a bomb; and redoubled international inspection.
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The Iranians recovered, and rebuilt the facility, tripling the number of centrifuges that existed before the cyberattack and opening a new centrifuge center deep in a mountain called Fordow, which is far harder to bomb.
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Rouhani said at a meeting with Iranian expatriates in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday that the country is now testing IR-9 centrifuges, which convert mined uranium into fuel for nuclear power.
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WASHINGTON — America's fast-growing ranks of secret cyberwarriors have in recent years blown up nuclear centrifuges in Iran and turned to computer code and electronic warfare to sabotage North Korea's missile launches, with mixed results.
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Those limits include cutting its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium and heavy water, capping the level of uranium enrichment to 2628 percent and limiting uranium-enrichment activities to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges.
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Mr. Yang cited as a potential model the case that United States officials built last year against a Chinese executive accused of selling North Korea a chemical that can be used in nuclear-enrichment centrifuges.
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Rouhani's announcement came after Ali Akhbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Monday that Tehran had doubled the number of advanced IR-2102 centrifuges operating in the country to 2300.
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The spokesman said Iran has eliminated 90 percent of its nuclear stockpile, dismantled thousands of centrifuges and shut down its path to develop the nuclear materials needed used to build weapons — all under IAEA monitoring.
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Although Iran did not withdraw from the 2238 treaty altogether, it no longer recognizes restrictions on uranium enrichment levels, the number of uranium centrifuges it operates, or the amount of enriched uranium in its stockpiles.
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But, critics argue, pausing Iran's entire nuclear enrichment apparatus only extends the breakout time by a few months since the country could just rebuild or reinstall its centrifuges if it decided to leave the agreement.
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So before negotiators even start talking about the number of centrifuges, uranium stockpiles, or monitoring, much of the discussions with North Korea are likely to snag on access — simply on finding out what's going on.
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Obama's Iran deal halted Tehran's uranium-enriching centrifuges, freezing the breakout time to a nuclear weapon and postponing a US decision on military action that could destabilize an already shattered region and shock the world economy.
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The think tank said images of the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon could also indicate operation of centrifuges that could be used to increase North Korea's stock of enriched uranium, its other source of bomb fuel.
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Those centrifuges are models known as IR-2016s, based on a 224s Dutch design that Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan used to build Islamabad&aposs nuclear weapons program and later sold to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
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Since the deal was signed in July, Iran has had to put into storage more than 12,000 centrifuges, ship out almost its entire stockpile of enriched uranium and remove the core of its heavy-water reactor.
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Iran says it would reverse the violations, which have included enriching uranium to a higher level than set in the agreement and operating prohibited advanced centrifuges, the machines that purify uranium, if the sanctions were removed.
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The proposed intelligence operation would have inserted a computer "worm" into the facility with the aim of frying Fordo's computer systems — effectively delaying or destroying the ability of Iranian centrifuges to enrich uranium at the site.
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In sum, the malicious worm, which is widely believed to be the work of the US and Israeli governments, worked by burrowing into the plant and tampering with its centrifuges, and targeted systems made by Siemens.
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The grim prospect of Iran installing new centrifuges to enrich uranium for bombs explains why the other parties to the deal (Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France and the European Union) are fighting to keep it alive.
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Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for Iran's nuclear agency, said earlier this month that the increase in LEU production does not mean that Iran has increased the number of centrifuges in use, another requirement of the deal.
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Among other limitations, the deal also reduces Iran's capacity to enrich uranium by two-thirds, from nearly 20,000 centrifuges (about half of which were operating) to just over 6,000 at its Natanz facility for ten years.
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The transfer of centrifuges and other equipment from Fordow to storage at another underground enrichment site at Natanz was completed within a deadline of one year from the day the deal was put in place, Jan.
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Adding to Middle East tensions, Iran started to inject uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground nuclear facility, further distancing itself from a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that curbed its atomic work.
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Before sanctions can be lifted against Iran, international inspectors need to certify that Iran has dismantled thousands of centrifuges, reduced its stockpile of uranium and taken other steps to cut off access to a nuclear bomb.
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The addition of centrifuges is among several steps Iran has taken in recent months to ratchet up pressure on the West in response to President Trump's decision to exit the 2015 nuclear agreement and reimpose sanctions.
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"We do not currently have any plan to increase capacity and production process by changing the capacity of centrifuges," Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told the semi-official news agency ISNA.
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Iran's November 28500 feeding of uranium hexafluoride (UF6900) gas into one third of the 2628,28503 primitive IR-22019 centrifuges at Fordow, and subsequent uranium enrichment there, constitutes its fourth round of JCPOA violations since May 2019.
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Under the terms of the accord, Iran also agreed to convert a deep underground enrichment facility into a "technology center" that cannot contain nuclear material and where the number of centrifuges is limited for 15 years.
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LONDON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday it was concerned and disappointed by Iran's plan to take another step away from a 2015 nuclear deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up uranium enrichment.
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"We continue to believe that we need to be enforcing our sanctions to the maximum extent possible," the U.S. official said when asked about Iran's decision to start developing centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment.
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In response to the US policy, shaped by administration hardliners like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iran has also resumed nuclear activity, even starting up centrifuges in an underground facility dismantled under the Obama-era deal.
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I could fill the rest of this piece complaining about some provisions — like inspections or Iran coming clean on past activity — but Iran has dismantled centrifuges, reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium and shut down facilities.
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Nearly a decade ago, hackers believed to be from the United States and Israel, successfully infiltrated an Iranian nuclear facility and destroyed centrifuges, but it was never confirmed the Stuxnet worm came from the United States.
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Under the terms of the accord, Iran also agreed to convert a deep underground enrichment facility into a "technology center" that cannot contain nuclear material and where the number of centrifuges is limited for 5623 years.
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Under the terms of the accord, Iran also agreed to convert a deep underground enrichment facility into a "technology center" that cannot contain nuclear material and where the number of centrifuges is limited for 5623 years.
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When Obama forged the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, he agreed to lift crippling economic sanctions in exchange for Iran shipping out a large chunk of its enriched uranium and taking thousands of centrifuges offline.
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Both sides have kept their part of the bargain; the uranium and the centrifuges are dealt with, Iran shows no sign of deliberate cheating, and the UN Security Council's nuclear-related economic sanctions have all been lifted.
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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly confirmed that Iran has complied with the deal's restrictions, such as the requirement that Iran dismantle thousands of centrifuges (devices that can be used to create weapons-grade uranium).
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It was a time of extraordinary tension, as the Iranians accelerated their production of centrifuges and produced near-bomb-grade fuel and Western intelligence agencies feared they might be on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
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As Yahoo News noted, the U.S. has launched cyber attacks on Iranian infrastructure before, including use of the infamous Stuxnet computer worm to attack and destroy centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility from 2009 to 2010.
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The worm, parts of which surfaced publicly in 2010 due to a programing error that allowed it to spread across the open internet, is believed to have destroyed a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium.
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In a speech on Tuesday, however, Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, said that his patience had run out, and that Iran would begin to inject uranium gas into the more than 1,000 centrifuges that remained inside the mountain.
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it had launched a new batch of advanced centrifuges to accelerate uranium enrichment, further reducing compliance with the 22015 nuclear deal following the withdrawal of its arch-foe the United States.
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In an intense briefing on Iran with President Obama shortly after his inauguration, he asked me how much low-enriched uranium the Iranians had at Natanz, a major nuclear plant where they had thousands of centrifuges spinning.
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As a small prelude to what the future may bring, the Stuxnet worm, widely attributed to the U.S. and Israeli governments, infected fast-spinning centrifuges in Iran's nuclear-enrichment program and caused them to tear themselves apart.
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It's widely believed the USB sticks were planted with the virus, which besides having several valuable zero-day exploits — software or hardware security flaws that go un-detected — targeted the physical Siemens controllers of the nuclear centrifuges.
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"The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges," the government said in a statement issued after an emergency meeting to discuss Soleimani's killing.
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PARIS (Reuters) - France's foreign ministry on Thursday called on Iran to refrain from any concrete action that does not comply with its 2015 nuclear deal obligations after Tehran said it would develop centrifuges for faster uranium enrichment.
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Yet by the time Hecker arrived, the cooling tower was no longer needed because North Korea had built the centrifuges, meaning they had developed an alternative way to build a nuclear bomb without the U.S. finding out.
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There is nostalgia for the days before the Islamic Revolution, when President Jimmy Carter came to Iran to meet with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi — the son of Reza Shah — instead of weapons experts haggling over nuclear centrifuges.
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Iran has long been on alert for cyber threats, after the United States and Israel covertly sabotaged Iran's nuclear programme in 2009 and 2010 with the Stuxnet computer virus, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges that were enriching uranium.
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The worm, parts of which surfaced publicly in 2010 due to a programming error that allowed it to spread across the open internet, is believed to have destroyed a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium.
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Israel couples its conventional capabilities with a world-class intelligence service that has already penetrated Iranian defenses, neutralized Iranian nuclear scientists, obtained sensitive information on its nuclear program and potentially engineered the Stuxnet virus that targeted Iranian centrifuges.
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The breakthrough came at the same time the Iranians were making speedy progress toward complying with the terms of the nuclear deal by disabling a plutonium reactor, turning off centrifuges and shipping enriched uranium out of the country.
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Under the terms of the deal, Iran would reduce its uranium stockpile by roughly 98%, phase out its centrifuges over the next 15 years, limit research activities, allow heightened inspections and ship spent fuel outside of the country.
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That step is to be made after international nuclear inspectors verify that Iran has shipped 98 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country and disabled and removed centrifuges, and taken a large plutonium reactor permanently offline.
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The growing cry in Tehran is that Rouhani and his foreign minister Javad Zarif were had by Washington because Iranian concessions — the slashing of the number of centrifuges and its uranium stockpile — have not produced promised economic benefits.
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Deal supporters say that the pact has stretched the "break out" time Iran would need to race to a bomb to at least a year, has mothballed most of its centrifuges and all but eradicated its uranium stockpile.
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Under the 2018 pact, Iran agreed to turn Fordow into a "nuclear, physics and technology center" where 1,044 centrifuges are used for purposes other than enrichment, such as producing stable isotopes, which have a variety of civil uses.
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Iran's president announced on Tuesday that Tehran will begin injecting uranium gas into 21,25 centrifuges, the latest step away from its nuclear deal with world powers since President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord over a year ago.
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But Iran announced its third major step away from the JCPOA this week, stating it would begin developing more advanced centrifuges that would speed up its uranium enrichment, and lift all limits on its nuclear research and development.
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The details of what commitments the Iranian government plans to scale back are unclear, but a Wall Street Journal report quotes European diplomats who believe the nation may devote more research into centrifuges that could produce enriched uranium.
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Those who supported the withdrawal cited the sunset clause that, after 15 years, would permit Iran to enrich an unlimited amount of uranium, to include weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, using upgraded, modern centrifuges indigenously produced in Iran.
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The IAEA report said Iran has dramatically increased the number of centrifuges it uses to produce the nuclear fuel, bringing about 1,000 of the machines back into use in recent months, including at the Fordow underground enrichment facility.
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Developing new types of uranium enrichment machines is on Tehran's agenda, a spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation said in a televised news conference on Saturday, adding that Iran has started injecting gas into advanced centrifuges.
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That would almost certainly revive debate in the United States over possible military action, or a resumption of covert action, like the cyberattack on Iran's centrifuges a decade ago that the United States and Israel secretly conducted together.
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A quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is policing the deal, last month said Iran had installed up to 33 IR-6 centrifuges, although only 10 had been tested with uranium hexafluoride feedstock so far.
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And sometimes the corruption of data or loss of control over it can cause physical repercussions — as when the Stuxnet computer worm, a program run by the United States and Israel, caused great damage to Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has committed another breach of its nuclear deal with major powers by enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges, a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog policing that deal said on Thursday, further fraying the landmark accord.
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When the Six-Party Talks finally collapsed, North Korea went on to secretly build centrifuges to enrich uranium and proceeded to test five nuclear bombs, each bigger than the one before, at the site it now promises to mothball.
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In return, Iran would halt almost all nuclear enrichment, eliminate its stockpile of enriched uranium, drastically reduce the number of centrifuges it would be able to operate, and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency into its facilities.
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That was done repeatedly at Natanz, as malware was refined and refined again, with each version subtly manipulating the computer controllers for the centrifuges so that the giant, spinning machines would gyrate wildly out of control and destroy themselves.
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has completed a facility to build advanced centrifuges, Iran's nuclear chief was quoted on Sunday as saying, as Tehran prepares to increase its uranium-enrichment capacity if the nuclear deal collapses after the United States exits.
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TEHRAN, Iran – Iran&aposs nuclear chief has inaugurated the Islamic Republic&aposs new nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz that is geared toward producing centrifuges that will operate within the limits of the nuclear deal Tehran signed with world powers.
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"Iran has removed excess centrifuges and infrastructure from the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in line with its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)," the IAEA said in a statement, using the deal's full name.
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's underground uranium enrichment Fordow facility "will soon be back to full operation", Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted, a few hours after Tehran announced that uranium gas had been injected into centrifuges at the site on Wednesday.
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Iran said on Monday it had launched a new batch of advanced centrifuges to accelerate uranium enrichment, following the withdrawal from the nuclear pact by the United States, and renewed sanctions on Iran, which have harmed its oil exports.
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The negotiators won this is extra time by limiting Iran's enrichment to less than 5 percent, reducing Tehran's installed centrifuges by two-thirds (from 19,000 to about 6,000), limiting research, and by reducing its uranium stockpile by 98 percent.
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Mr. Bolton's opposition to the negotiations with Iran is longstanding, dating from his days in the Bush administration, when he helped derail European talks with Tehran at a time it still had only a few centrifuges, Mr. Heisbourg said.
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For the most part, Western attention focuses on what Iran has — centrifuges, ballistic missiles, enriched uranium — as well as what it does — fund Hezbollah, assist Bashar al-Assad, arm the Houthis, or imprison the occasional British or American citizen.
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Iran has swatted back, announcing last week that it would restart the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material again, though without withdrawing fully from the nuclear deal, which China, Russia and the European Union still support.
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Cliff Kupchan, chairman of Eurasia Group said Iran will most certainly amp up its nuclear program, producing low-enriched uranium and installing advanced centrifuges, activities it ended under the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
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The United Nation's atomic watchdog agency said Monday that Iran is moving forward with plans to use more advanced centrifuges in a development that would further breach the country's 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, The Associated Press reported.
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Unlike the weapons thwarted against Estonia that focused on blocking various services and overwhelming computers, STUXNET was designed to inflict physical damage toward certain systems and equipment, the centrifuges of an Iranian uranium enrichment plant managed by SCADA networks.
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It shipped nearly its entire 12-ton stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country, reduced its number of functioning uranium enrichment centrifuges by two-thirds and permanently re-engineered the Arak heavy-water reactor by filling its core with concrete.
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"A couple of years ago, I experienced a moment in Uganda while talking to primary health workers, which made me realize centrifuges are a critical part of a diagnostics lab infrastructure, and they were missing from most places," Prakash said.
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To convince those countries to put sanctions back in place, the US would have needed to show that Iran wasn't abiding by the terms of the deal — failing to dismantle nuclear centrifuges, for example, or denying inspectors access to nuclear facilities.
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For example, the United States and Iran were struggling late Saturday to define details of what kind of "advanced centrifuges" Iran will be able to develop nearly a decade from now — the kind of definitional difference that can undermine an accord.
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Mr Einhorn thinks that Mr Trump is therefore more likely to try to win European support for a better deal, perhaps one that restricts research and development on new centrifuges until much later and lengthens expiry dates on centrifuge numbers.
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He also looks at the hack of Sony Pictures, probably by North Korea in response to the release of "The Interview", a satirical film about the country's leader, and the American-Israeli Stuxnet software-driven sabotage of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
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It was intended as a follow-up to "Olympic Games," the code name of a cyberattack by the United States and Israel that destroyed 20093,000 centrifuges and temporarily disrupted production at Natanz, a far larger but less protected enrichment site.
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In public interventions, European government leaders and ambassadors said they would not re-open JCPOA and urged Mr Trump not to break the unity that had brought Iran to halt its nuclear centrifuges and ship enriched uranium out of the country.
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Iran has been scaling up its cyber capacities since the United States and Israel carried out a cyber assault on Iran in 2010, now known as the "Stuxnet" worm, aimed at disabling centrifuges in its nuclear programme, the FireEye CEO noted.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to announce Wednesday that Tehran may withdraw in whole or in part from the 2015 nuclear deal, potentially by resuming production of high-grade centrifuges for nuclear fuel and limiting inspections of nuclear facilities.
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Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at Kyungnam University's Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said there could be up to 6,000 centrifuges in North Korea, and 4,000 of them in Yongbyon, based on studies by Hecker and other agencies.
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By any reasonable measure, Iran has done what it signed up to on issues relating to exporting enriched uranium outside the country: dismantling centrifuges and converting its Arak reactor so it can't produce the plutonium required to make a bomb.
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VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has complied with a deadline set by its landmark nuclear deal with world powers by removing hundreds of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, from a site buried deep inside a mountain, the U.N. atomic agency said on Monday.
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The country said on Monday that it had started using a new set of advanced centrifuges — a move that crosses yet another limitation of the 2015 nuclear agreement and brings Iran closer to being able to build a nuclear bomb.
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VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. nuclear inspectors are on the ground in Iran and will report back on relevant activities, an International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman said on Wednesday after Iran said it injected uranium gas into centrifuges at its Fordow site.
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The country said on Monday that it had started using a new set of advanced centrifuges — a move that crosses yet another limit of the 2015 nuclear agreement and brings Iran closer to being able to build a nuclear bomb.
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WASHINGTON — Iran said Monday that it had begun running a significant number of new, advanced uranium centrifuges, accelerating its ability to produce enough nuclear material to make a bomb and throwing its 153 nuclear deal with world powers into further disarray.
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Iranian nuclear agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi told state television earlier on Monday that Tehran was now operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges and its scientists were developing an IR-9 able to enrich 50 times faster than IR-1s.
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DUBAI, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Iran's underground uranium enrichment Fordow facility "will soon be back to full operation", Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted, a few hours after Tehran announced that uranium gas had been injected into centrifuges at the site on Wednesday.
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While Iran has not seriously tested the limits of the agreement, it made an effort, several months ago, to purchase carbon fiber from Germany, a high-technology product used in the production of advanced rotors for centrifuges that purify uranium.
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"All of the steps they have taken are reversible, of course, but if they do start down the road to research centrifuge technology and to test different levels of centrifuges they will gain more knowledge and that is of serious concern."
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By August, Iran had tested eight advanced IR-8 centrifuges although the deal limits it to one at most, the report said, adding that Iran also operated between 13 and 15 interconnected IR-6 machines, which the deal restricts to 10.
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Iran shipping out its enriched fuel, shelving two thirds of its centrifuges, removing the core of the Arak facility and filling it with concrete, releasing the 4 US citizens in the swap and the sailors in less than a day.
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The archive captures the program at a moment in time — a moment 15 years ago, before tensions accelerated, before the United States and Israel attacked Iran's nuclear centrifuges with a cyberweapon, before an additional underground enrichment center was built and discovered.
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has begun using arrays of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium in violation of its 22 nuclear deal, a spokesman said Saturday, warning that Europe has little time left to offer new terms to save the accord.
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DUBAI, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Developing new types of uranium enrichment machines is on Tehran's agenda, a spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation said in a televised news conference on Saturday, adding that Iran has started injecting gas into advanced centrifuges.
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VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday that Iran's work with advanced centrifuges is a breach of the nuclear deal Washington has already pulled out of, expressing its concern while repeating that it is open to holding talks with Tehran.
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As required, Iran relinquished 97 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile, dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges and its entire plutonium facility, abided by the most intrusive international inspection and monitoring regime in history, and forswore ever producing a nuclear weapon.
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It also said Iran was starting to follow through on its pledge last week to further breach its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, this time installing more advanced centrifuges and moving toward enriching uranium with them, which the deal bans.
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Those attacks are rare in the history of state-sponsored hacking, but disturbing in their effects; in 2009 and 2010 the US and Israel jointly launched a piece of code known as Stuxnet, for instance, that destroyed Iranian nuclear enrichment centrifuges.
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While the two presidents were in New York, international inspectors visited Iran's main nuclear site, at Natanz, and confirmed that the country was now installing advanced centrifuges, which enrich uranium, years ahead of the schedule allowed in the 2015 agreement.
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The attacks on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, begun in the George W. Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games, destroyed roughly 1,000 centrifuges and set back the Iranians by a year or so — the amount of time is still hotly disputed.
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In accordance with the nuclear deal, Iran abandoned some two-thirds of its operational centrifuges, 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium and a heavy water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for one to two nuclear weapons every year.
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As part of this agreement, Iran recently shippednearly all of its enriched uranium to Russia, and is destroying two-thirds of its centrifuges to enrich uranium for weapons, thereby blocking Tehran's pathways to a nuclear weapon for at least 85033 years.
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But my understanding was the US made it very clear to Israel that after the explosion of the thousand centrifuges that now would be a good time not to push it because the Iranians still didn't understand what was going on.
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After Libya unilaterally decided to give up its fledgling nuclear program in 2003, planeloads of documents, equipment and even centrifuges related to the country&aposs nuclear and missile programs were transported by U.S. military aircraft to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
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But tensions are mounting; Iran has not yet bolted from the agreement or resumed its nuclear enrichment, but reports suggest Tehran may well stop abiding by some provisions in the JCPOA, particularly on research on advanced centrifuges, as payback against US sanctions.
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Since Stuxnet first targeted and destroyed uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran last decade, the cybersecurity world has waited for the next step in that digital arms race: Another piece of malicious software designed specifically to enable the damage or destruction of industrial equipment.
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These sanctions have nothing to do with the Obama administration's landmark nuclear deal with Iran, during which the US and allies lifted onerous sanctions on Iran's economy in exchange for shuttering thousands of centrifuges and getting rid of most of its enriched uranium.
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For over a decade Iranian scientists there have fed uranium hexafluoride into centrifuges that spin at twice the speed of sound so as to sift out uranium-235, the isotope capable of sustaining a chain reaction in a nuclear power plant or bomb.
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Once Iran meets the other demands of the deal, like disassembling more than 13,000 centrifuges, the major powers agreed they would give it access to $100 billion in frozen assets from oil sales and allow it to do business again with the world.
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Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for Iran's nuclear agency, said the increase in production does not mean Iran increased the number of centrifuges in use, another requirement of the deal, per AP. Go deeper: Why war with Iran is suddenly on the table
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LONDON (Reuters) - A facility in Iran's Natanz nuclear plant to build advanced centrifuges will be completed in a month, Iran's nuclear chief said on Wednesday, as Tehran prepares to increase its uranium- enrichment capacity if the nuclear deal collapses after U.S. exit.
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Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear scientist who previously headed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in the United States, said North Korea told him they had 25,000 centrifuges, to produce weapons-grade uranium to build bombs, in operation during his visit to Yongbyon in 2010.
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Within months of the deal being signed last July, Iran began to dismantle almost all of its centrifuges, which could be used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity, and to move its stockpile of low-enriched uranium out of the country.
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DUBAI, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Iran has started to inject uranium gas into centrifuges at its underground Fordow nuclear facility, state TV reported on Wednesday, as part of Tehran's fourth step to scale back its commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.
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In what appears to be a new breach of the deal, Iran has also installed small numbers of centrifuges not even mentioned in the accord, including single models of the IR-8s, IR-8B, IR-9 and IR-s, the report showed.
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The U.S. government is believed to be have worked with Israel to carry out the Stuxnet cyberattack, in which a highly sophisticated computer worm altered the spin rates and pressures of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, making the system spin out of control in 2007.
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The deal, meant to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions, had Iran shipping 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantling more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and pouring concrete into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.
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"We created a national intelligence estimate in 2007 that said that the Iranians had stopped the weaponization part of their program -- missiles still going on, centrifuges still spinning -- but the actual building of the weapon, that they had stopped in 2003," Hayden said.
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The Iran deal required Tehran — up front — to eliminate 98 percent of its uranium stockpile, dismantle and put under seal two-thirds of its centrifuges, cap uranium enrichment at levels well below weapons-grade and remove the core of its plutonium reactor.
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If the latter option were chosen, it would be akin to the cyberoperations that blew up Iran's nuclear centrifuges a decade ago and the move to wipe out military databases several months ago, after the shooting down of an American drone by Iran.
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South Korean news outlets rang the alarm in 2011, alleging that hundreds of North Korean nuclear and missile experts were working in Iran, including at the facility in Natanz where centrifuges will continue spinning under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
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The 2015 agreement restricted how many centrifuges Iran could use to enrich uranium — increasing the percentage of U-235, the rare isotope crucial to its use in nuclear fission — how highly it could enrich the metal, and how much uranium it could stockpile.
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Behrouz Kamalvandi of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran recently stated that Iran was activating advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges prohibited by the deal, and the country has also began enriching uranium above the terms of the agreement, according to the Associated Press.
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In its last update on Iran's nuclear activities this month, the IAEA said Tehran had begun installing more advanced centrifuges - models other than the IR-1 that are only supposed to be used for research - and was moving toward enriching uranium with them.
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Perhaps the most notorious cyberattack in history was the worm known as Stuxnet -- an aggressive, self-spreading piece of code that, when installed on a system connected to Iranian nuclear centrifuges, would cause them to spin rapidly and erratically, until they exploded.
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Sporadic talks in the intervening years went nowhere, and by 2013, when we sat down again to negotiate — this time directly with the United States, as well — Iran had increased its number of centrifuges to 20,000 from fewer than 200 in 2005.
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New York (CNN)President Hassan Rouhani confirmed Thursday that Iran has started using advanced models of centrifuges to enrich uranium in violation of the Iran nuclear deal and rejected US attempts to blame his country for the attack on Saudi oil facilities.
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The leaders — considered to be "modern-day prophets" by the church's 15.6 million members — are seen discussing a wide range of topics, including the "homosexual agenda," Iran's nuclear centrifuges, how to convert Kurds to Mormonism, and whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is gay.
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The placement of the centrifuges, identified as IR-2M, IR-4 and IR-6, may have served as a subtle warning to Europe as it tries to salvage the atomic accord after President Donald Trump&aposs decision to withdraw from it and restore U.S. sanctions.
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Interactive: Nuclear North Korea Interactive: Kim's latest act of defiance "North Korea's centrifuges and new missiles all depend on components made with CNC machine tools," said Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California.
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Interactive: Nuclear North Korea Interactive: Kim's latest act of defiance "North Korea's centrifuges and new missiles all depend on components made with CNC machine tools," said Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California.
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Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up uranium enrichment to 20% purity, a move that would go far beyond the small steps Iran has taken in the past week to nudge stocks of fissile material just beyond limits in the pact.
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The U.S. Treasury said the companies acted as a procurement network for Iran's Centrifuge Technology Company, or TESA, which plays a pivotal in Iran's uranium enrichment nuclear program through the production of centrifuges used in facilities belonging to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
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The deal reached between six powers and Iran in 2015 stated that no more enrichment would take place at the Fordow site near the holy city of Qom for 15 years, but that Iran could keep just over 1,000 centrifuges there for other uses.
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"After all successful preparations..., injection of uranium gas into centrifuges started on Thursday at Fordow...The whole the process has been supervised by the inspectors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog," the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said in a statement carried by state media.
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The IAEA said that on Wednesday it had verified the transfer of a cylinder of uranium hexafluoride gas from Iran's enrichment center at Natanz to Fordow, where the cylinder was connected to two cascades of centrifuges for passivation, "a preparatory activity conducted prior to enrichment".
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Iran began developing its cyber capabilities in earnest following its own experience with the Stuxnet virus in 2010 – a sophisticated and precisely targeted cyber operation reportedly orchestrated by the United States and Israel to destroy centrifuges that could be used to develop Iranian atomic weapons.
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Even a big-vision idealist like Mr. Licklider could never have imagined that more than 50 years later, we would be telling the internet our deepest secrets and our whereabouts, and plugging in our smartphones, refrigerators, cars, oil pipelines, power grid and uranium centrifuges.
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While the scientists did not dispute Mr. Trump's objections, they emphasized that under the accord, severe restrictions on Iran's supply of uranium remain in place through 2030, surveillance of Iran's uranium-enriching centrifuges remains through 2035, and surveillance of uranium mines and mills through 2040.
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"Iran is currently operating only a fraction of the centrifuges it had pre-JCPOA," says Henry Rome, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group international consulting firm, using the initials for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name of the nuclear deal.
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More than a decade ago the United States and Israel cooperated on a mission code-named Olympic Games, the most sophisticated cyberattack in history, to get into the computer code driving the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment site and make them blow up.
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Its bailiwick is what is known as signals intelligence — known among spies simply as "sigint" — and other forms of electronic spying, such as creating computer viruses that caused Iranian nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control or some North Korean missiles to veer off course.
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In 220, in tandem with Israeli intelligence, the U.S. launched the first digital attack on another country's critical infrastructure, deploying a "worm," known as Stuxnet, that was designed to cause centrifuges in Iran to spin out of control and thereby delay its nuclear development.
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By clearly defining in detail the actions Iran must take – for example, to dismantle the Arak reactor and deactivate 13,000 centrifuges – the JCPOA has given our allies, other members of the P5+1, and our intelligence community confidence that the JCPOA is being implemented.
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The digital crumbs from that attack suggested, cybersecurity experts said, that the virus was the work of the same attackers behind Stuxnet, the computer attack that destroyed the centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility and that has been attributed to the United States and Israel.
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Mr. Earnest said on Friday that the United States would wait for independent verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had met its obligations under the deal, which included mothballing thousands of centrifuges and shipping out the vast majority of its supply of enriched uranium.
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Stuxnet, 2009: Starting in 2009, an ingenious piece of malware known as Stuxnet began to infiltrate the the network of Iran's nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, silently altering the settings of its fragile centrifuges to destroy them and sabotage the country's quest for a nuclear weapon.
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The Tehran regime eliminated 97 percent of its uranium stockpile, removed and destroyed the core from its Arak reactor, blocked production of weapons-grade plutonium, ripped out more than 13,000 centrifuges, halted all uranium enrichment at the underground Fordow site, and implemented the gold-standard of verification.
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Go deeper: Iran quadruples production rate of low-enriched uranium Editor's note: This story has been updated to include new developments reported by AP. The UN watchdog is now raising questions about whether Iran is complying with key provisions to limit the nation's use of advanced centrifuges.
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Image: David Becker/Getty ImagesSharples oil centrifuge in the lower oil room at Diablo Powerhouse, on Skagit River, near Newhalem, Whatcom County, WA. Image: Library of CongressCascade of gas centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium at the U.S. gas centrifuge plant in Piketon, Ohio from 1984.
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The panel said it is continuing to investigate sanctioned individuals, companies and other entities in Asia that clandestinely procured centrifuges for North Korea&aposs nuclear program and attempted to sell a wide range of military equipment to governments and armed groups in the Middle East and Africa.
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In addition to the tangible, quantifiable advances in global secrity made possible by the deal -- the reductions in centrifuges, the limits on the amount of highly enriched uranium permitted to be held in Iran, and the intense inspections regime, for example -- the Iran deal provides opportunities.
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They have so far avoided triggering a dispute resolution process contained in the deal but it could take new steps in the next two months, including restarting dismantled centrifuges and purifying uranium to a sharply higher threshold, unless it is allow to resume normal oil sales.
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Tehran on Sunday gave Europe 60 days to find a new way to help Iran economically and said it would restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up uranium enrichment to 20% purity, Reuters reported, citing Mojtaba Zolnour, the chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
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GENEVA/DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran threatened on Monday to restart deactivated centrifuges and ramp up enrichment of uranium to 20% purity in a move away from the 2015 nuclear deal, but the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards insisted the world knows Tehran is not pursuing nuclear arms.
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While Iran has said it will stick with the deal as long as Europe, Russia and China do, Tehran would be tempted to push its boundaries in increments — such as testing more advanced centrifuges or increasing its stockpile of low-enriched uranium — if the U.S. pulls out.
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In response, Tehran announced plans to breach new aspects of the accord and on Sunday announced it no longer felt compelled to stick to any limit on the number of centrifuges used in the making of enriched uranium, which could be used for a nuclear weapon.
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After the US reimposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran started breaching some aspects of the accord and on Sunday announced that it no longer felt compelled to stick to any limit on the number of centrifuges used in the making of enriched uranium needed for nuclear power.
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Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili — An Iranian import-export businessman charged with procuring nuclear-related equipment for Iran from 22012 through 2015, including conspiring with Chinese associate Sihai Cheng to obtain hundreds of U.S.-made pressure transducers for the gas centrifuges Iran used to secretly enrich uranium.
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To date, it has surpassed the JCPOA's limits on the level of uranium enrichment; exceeded the cap on the amount of low enriched uranium it may stockpile; deployed and tested more centrifuges than allowed; accumulated more heavy water than permitted; and resumed enrichment at the underground Fordow facility.
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The International Atomic Energy Agency verified on Saturday that Iran has shipped over 8.5 tons of enriched uranium to Russia so Iran can't use that in bomb-making, disabled more than 12,000 centrifuges and poured concrete into the core of a reactor at Arak designed to produce plutonium.
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"Failing to achieve such bans, the interim agreement does not appear to mitigate the risks of Iran being able to deploy these more powerful centrifuges after year 13, other than some negotiators stating that they believe that Iran will have trouble actually deploying them in the future," he said.
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Yes, Iran surrendered the vast majority of its weapons-grade (or nearly weapons-grade) uranium to Russia in 2015 (it went to Russia, so definitely nothing to worry about there), but Iran may still have enough centrifuges to (eventually) manufacture the uranium it needs for for a bomb.
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On Wednesday, however, Iran further raised pressure on those countries by announcing what would be a new breach of the deal - enriching uranium with the centrifuges it has at Fordow, a site that it dug in secret inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from potential aerial bombardment.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's expansion of uranium enrichment activities in defiance of key nuclear commitments is "a big step in the wrong direction," a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday, after Tehran announced it would start injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment facility.
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If Iran were to begin reinstalling its centrifuges and rebuilding its plutonium reactors, they would be able to begin rapidly expanding toward nuclear capability within a few years, said Jake Sullivan, a former top foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton who worked on negotiating the original deal in 2015.
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Chris Murphy says Trump is blindly risking conflict with Iran and could spark a war even if he doesn't want oneIn September, Iran took yet another big step away from the deal when it announced it would begin developing more advanced centrifuges that allow for more rapid uranium enrichment.
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TVEL has been working on a project to convert to non-enrichment purposes roughly one-third of the 1,044 IR-85033 centrifuges permitted at the Fordow enrichment plant (as of the November 2019 International Atomic Energy Agency report, however, it was only using 11 for this stable isotope project).
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"Wholly separate from if they spin a couple of extra centrifuges, if they began to move to a weapons program, this is something the entire world would find unacceptable and we'd end up down a path that I don't think is in the best interests of Iran," Pompeo said.
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"We have started lifting limitations on our Research and Development imposed by the deal ... it will include development of more rapid and advanced centrifuges ... all these steps are reversible if the other side fulfils its promises," Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's nuclear agency, said in a televised news conference.
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Iran is basically complying with the core parts of the agreement — such as limiting the number of centrifuges it has and eliminating its stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could quickly be converted to weapons-grade material — that make it harder for the country to make a nuclear weapon.
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ZB: This seems to get to the broader point: It's really easy to point to instances of Iranian malfeasance, but those don't violate the fundamental terms of the deal about centrifuges, for instance — the things that actually put up roadblocks in the way of them building a nuclear weapon.
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In 2009, a bit of code on a USB flash drive did real-life damage for what may have been the first time: it covertly spun a set of uranium centrifuges at Iran's Natanz facility into smithereens, and set the country's controversial nuclear program back by a decade.
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This was computer code that, once inside Natanz — and there was an aspect to it that allowed it get inside, which is interesting — but once inside Natanz, it infected something called a programmable-logic-controller, a PLC, that controlled the centrifuges, which are the things that enrich uranium.
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The summit comes just a week after Iran announced plans to build a new facility to make hardware used to enrich uranium, a hint that it would move forward with assembling centrifuges to potentially build nuclear weapons if the deal Trump pulled the US out of falls apart.
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Those commitments include reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds, capping its level of uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile from around 10,000 kg to 300 kg for 15 years, and submitting to international inspections to verify its compliance.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The star of a live television interview in Iran&aposs new nuclear workshop wasn&apost the head of the country&aposs atomic agency, but three centrifuges labeled in English in the background, advanced devices Tehran is prohibited from using by the nuclear deal with world powers.
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"If the deal dies and Iran starts enriching uranium again at 20% levels and spinning the higher speed centrifuges, we will be closer to a military confrontation involving the U.S. and Iran or potentially Israel and Iran," Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC Thursday.
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The "treaty" would seek to put multiple outstanding issues that Trump has railed against into one box: Iran's ballistic missile program, the "sunset clauses" that ease limits on Iran's centrifuges and nuclear enrichment under the current deal, and even Iran's behavior in regional conflicts like the ones in Yemen and Syria.
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First, we have known about this facility for some time, and it's full of file cabinets and paper, not aluminum tubes for centrifuges, and second, so far as anyone knows, there is nothing in it that would allow Iran to break out of the JCPOA any faster than it otherwise could.
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Mr. Christie's assertion that "America and the world are measurably less safe" because of the deal is far more questionable: Iran gave up 98 percent of its nuclear fuel, dismantled vast numbers of centrifuges and other nuclear infrastructure, and so far appears to have stuck to everything it agreed to.
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While the report found that Iran has been upholding its most basic requirements under the deal – limiting its number of operational enrichment centrifuges and the size of its stockpile of low enriched uranium – the report also noted that the Iranian regime had failed to meet the higher standards of compliance.
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In early January — days before the Iranian military mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian jet — Tehran said it would no longer adhere to the accord's limits on how many centrifuges it could install to enrich uranium, which is used in nuclear weapons, or the level at which it could be enriched.
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Those terms include dismantling the vast majority of its centrifuges, shipping all but 300 kg of low-enriched uranium out of the country, transforming the Arak reactor into a scientific research facility not capable of producing plutonium and opening up the country to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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TEHRAN, Iran — Iran will start injecting uranium gas into over a thousand centrifuges at a fortified nuclear facility built inside a mountain, the country's president announced Tuesday in Tehran's latest step away from its atomic accord with world powers since President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal over a year ago.
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Since the JCPOA was implemented, Iran has destroyed the core of a reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium; removed two-thirds of its centrifuges (over 13,000) and placed them under international monitoring; and eliminated 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium – the raw materials necessary for a bomb.
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Speaking to the annual American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention, Biden touted how much of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium has been shipped out of the country and many of its centrifuges have been removed, saying that nation is much further away from obtaining a nuclear weapon than a year ago.
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An intelligence official, Tim Dowse, told the committee that British officials were nervous enough about United States suspicions that aluminum tubes acquired by Mr. Hussein could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium that they had initially kept the subject out of a British summary of Iraq's weapons projects published in 2002.
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The 2015 Iran deal mandates significant, long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran's enrichment facilities (from 85003,000 centrifuges to 5,060), strict limits on centrifuge research and development, elimination of its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium and a reduction of its low-enriched uranium stockpile (from nearly 8,000 kilograms to less than 300 kg).
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My critics will claim that a distant prospect of a nuclear Iran is still vastly preferable to an exit from the deal that allows Iran to bring its centrifuges out of storage and start spinning its way to a bomb once again, this time without the monitoring of United Nations inspectors. Maybe.
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The leak investigation that ensnared him began in June 2012, when David E. Sanger, a reporter for The New York Times, published a book, "Confront and Conceal," and an article in The Times that described Operation Olympic Games, an American-Israeli covert effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear centrifuges with a computer virus.
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Iran has pledged to return to higher levels of uranium enrichment in response to intensified U.S. sanctions, and in early January announced it was dropping all obligations to the deal — including limits on its number of operational nuclear centrifuges — in the wake of the U.S. killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
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Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Iran has poured concrete into its plutonium reactor, reduced its centrifuges from 2628,28500 to 6900,2628, reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium to no more than 28503 kilograms enriched no higher than 22019 percent, and submitted to continuous monitoring and inspections at its key nuclear facilities.
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"Since the JCPOA was implemented, Iran has destroyed the core of a reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium; removed two-thirds of its centrifuges (over 13,000) and placed them under international monitoring; and eliminated 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium — the raw materials necessary for a bomb," Obama wrote.
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Under the deal, Iran committed to reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds, capping its level of uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile from around 10,000 kg to 300 kg for 15 years, and submitting to international inspections to verify its compliance.
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Certainly, it is more promising to start this discussion now than waiting for after the sunset clause kicks in, when Iran will have an industrial-size enrichment program of advanced centrifuges with near-zero breakout time, missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and a more formidable military due to the lapse of the arms embargo.
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Here's a country, Iran, that's been stopped in its tracks on the path to a nuke, forced to dispose of all its highly enriched uranium, made to slash its low-enriched uranium stockpile, persuaded to shut down most of its centrifuges, and obliged to accept regular international supervision and monitoring of its nuclear facilities.
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State television said Iran would not respect any limits set down in the pact on the country's nuclear work: whether the limit on its number of uranium enrichment centrifuges to its enrichment capacity, the level to which uranium could be enriched, the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium or Iran's nuclear Research and Development activities.
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Under the nuclear deal that Secretary of State John Kerry reached in the summer of 2015 in Vienna, Iran was required to ship about 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country — a task it accomplished the next year — and to dismantle all but a small portion of the nuclear centrifuges that enrich uranium.
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Between the standardized building design, the robotic labor, and the new technique of sleeping in centrifuges, the moon was becoming much safer for humans than it had been in the earliest days, which even though only twenty years past, felt like a time of distant pioneers, no doubt because almost no one here now had been here then.
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It also extended Iran's breakout time to 12 months or more by forcing the country to significantly reduce its amount of enriched uranium; dismantle and remove the majority of its centrifuges (devices that can be used to create weapons-grade uranium); remove calandria from its reactors and fill them with concrete, and provide unprecedented access to its nuclear facilities.
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To bring the nuclear agreement into force, among other actions, Iran had to reduce its uranium stockpiles by 22018 percent to under 2300 kg (about 2018 pounds) for 225 years, reduce its centrifuges from 22018,22012 to 6,104, cease uranium enrichment at the underground Fordow facility, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency continuous access for 15 years.
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Instead, he cited Iran's ability to exploit the limitations and perceived flaws of the 2015 agreement, which neither addresses Iran's push for regional influence (including support for terrorism) nor precludes Iran from implementing many prerequisites of a nuclear weapons program when limits on centrifuges and enriched uranium "sunset" in just over 7 and 12 years respectively.
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While the J.C.P.O.A. was far from perfect, by signing the agreement, Iran gave up 98 percent of its uranium stockpile, dismantled 2/3 of its centrifuges, rendered its heavy water nuclear reactor unusable and agreed to unprecedented inspections that provide critical insight into, and early warning about, any attempts by Iran to accelerate its nuclear program.
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During a news conference shown live on Iranian television, a spokesman for the agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, confirmed that Iran had begun steps to conduct work on advanced centrifuges — the equipment that spins at supersonic speed to purify uranium, a fuel for nuclear power and nuclear weapons — in ways that are prohibited under the deal made with the Obama administration.
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So what happened was, it took over, and it monitored the entire operation for a number of days, and when it was ready, on its own, without any command from the outside, it then launched an attack, and it made the centrifuges spin wildly, either very fast or very slowly, until about a thousand of them blew apart.
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One project being pursued there is the production of stable isotopes here Iran has already breached the deal's limits on the purity to which it enriches uranium, its stock of enriched uranium and its ban on using advanced centrifuges for enrichment rather than research, each step raising pressure on the remaining parties to the deal aiming to prevent its total collapse.
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The leak investigation into General Cartwright, who left government in 2011, began in June 2012 after David E. Sanger, a reporter for The New York Times, published a book, Confront and Conceal, and a related article in The Times that provided details about Operation Olympic Games, an American-Israeli covert effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear centrifuges with the so-called Stuxnet computer virus.
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For context, recall that the nuclear deal - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – is a robust non-proliferation agreement under which Iran rolled back its nuclear program, gave up 98 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium, dismantled two-thirds of its operating centrifuges, and converted a number of its major enrichment facilities into peaceful research centers, among other concessions.
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Since the deal went into effect, Iran has eliminated 98 percent of its stockpile of highly-enriched uranium, a key ingredient in making nuclear weapons; removed 13,000 centrifuges, which are used to enrich elements, like uranium, to make a nuclear bomb; and destroyed the core of its nuclear reactor at Arak, halting its production of weapons-grade plutonium (another nuclear ingredient).
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Stuxnet was a joint American-Israeli operation that successfully infiltrated Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, and used malicious code to destroy a fifth of Iran's uranium centrifuges in 2010.... Among the targets Kaspersky uncovered were hotels and conference venues used for closed-door meetings by members of the United Nations Security Council to negotiate the terms of the Iran nuclear deal — negotiations from which Israel was excluded.
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But he also left a vaguely worded, dangling threat: If Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, failed to keep the deal going with Europe, Russia and China, the clerical government in Tehran might conclude that America's departure from the agreement freed it to speed up its centrifuges and begin enriching uranium at levels well above what was agreed upon in the summer of 2015.
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Militaries and intelligence agencies from around the world have used cyberattacks to shut down an air defense radar network prior to bombing, knock out a power grid, steal billions of dollars' worth of jet fighter R&D, steal tens of millions of actual dollars, destroy nearly every computer in an oil company's network, disrupt elections, and cause nuclear weapons centrifuges to violently self-destruct.
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Experts say Rouhani will come under pressure from hardliners in Iran to take actions that show the country isn't going to just be pushed around by the US. Iran could start refusing to comply with the nuclear deal's terms in any number of ways, such as limiting international inspectors' access to its nuclear facilities or restarting centrifuges that can enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
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Unless Pyongyang takes meaningful steps toward the complete dismantlement of its nuclear plants and centrifuges; stops illicit activities such as counterfeiting U.S. currency, money laundering and proliferation; releases all political prisoners and stops censoring the North Korean people in extremis; abides by international norms as an aid-recipient nation; and complies with monitoring and, ultimately, reforms its horrific prison camps, the U.S. is legally bound to continue to enforce sanctions.
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Iran has already shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of the country, dismantled and removed two-thirds of its centrifuges that would have produced uranium for nuclear weapons; removed the calandria from its heavy water reactor that would have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons and filled it with concrete; and provided unprecedented access to its nuclear facilities and supply chain that means we can verify its compliance at every step of the way.
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"Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass," Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,4003 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.
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Iran will start putting uranium gas into over a thousand centrifuges at a nuclear facility, the country's president said Tuesday, the latest step the country is taking in moving away from the 2015 nuclear deal that President TrumpDonald John TrumpBiden allies see boost in Tuesday's election results Sanders vows to end Trump's policies as he unveils immigration proposal Republicans warn election results are 'wake-up call' for Trump MORE pulled the U.S. out of last year.
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Before Iran received a dollar of sanctions relief, Iran had to eliminated 97 percent of its uranium stockpile, remove and destroy the core from its Arak reactor, block the production of weapons-grade plutonium, rip out more than 13,000 centrifuges, halt all uranium enrichment at the underground Fordow site, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to implement the safeguards necessary to monitor Iran's nuclear program and implement transparency measures to permit the gold-standard of access to inspectors.
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