Thread by @TheGoodISIS

NEW from @TheGoodISIS: Conversion of Fordow: Another Unfulfilled Hope of the Iran Nuclear Deal: Fordow now includes semi-indigenous nuclear equipment production

Read here: isis-online.org/isis-reports/d…

Our latest report contains four key findings:

1) The Fordow uranium enrichment facility has never been repurposed, as promised in the JCPOA. Everything required to enrich uranium to weapons grade could be quickly reconstituted in the underground portion of the facility.

2) Fordow is potentially part of Iran’s current threats to progressively go to higher enrichment levels and increase its stocks of enriched uranium, and if conducted there, Fordow’s underground tunnel complex is fortified to withstand aerial bombardment.

3) Fordow now includes semi-indigenous nuclear equipment production and potentially illicit procurement at the newly expanded support area, the former which was not likely intended by the JCPOA, and the latter which is prohibited.

4) The Nuclear Archive seized by Israel shows that Fordow’s original, intended purpose dating back to at least 2002 was to produce weapon-grade enriched uranium for 1-2 nuclear weapons per year. There is no doubt it could be reconstituted to fulfill that purpose.

Key recommendations:

- Suppliers need to be on guard against Iran violating sanctions and strategic trade controls in its efforts to obtain relevant subcomponents for the new nuclear equipment production center from abroad.

- JCPOA Joint Commission via UN Secretariat should investigate whether Iran is illicitly procuring equipment for its new semi-indigenous nuclear equipment production line at Fordow. Iran’s illicit procurement for its centrifuge program needs to be strenuously opposed & thwarted.

- The Trump administration should no longer grant a waiver for stable isotope separation work at the Fordow facility given Iran’s recent threats to increase enrichment.

- A waiver for work at Fordow legitimizes a facility that should not operate, given its connections to Iran’s former nuclear weapons program. Instead, a priority should be investigating its origins.

- The United States can reinstate the waiver if the stable isotope production work is moved to the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, where it should have been in the first place.

- Since Fordow was once part of an active nuclear weapons program and was a facility that Iran took special precautions to hide, its fate under any improved nuclear deal is critical.

- Fordow should be decommissioned and eliminated in any future deal. That the tunnel complex continues to function in a standby mode reduces the value of the JCPOA.