COMMENTARY
Iran Accelerates Nuclear Program Development
Underground infrastructure and advanced centrifuges as leverage ahead of a change of administration in Washington
Omer Niazi
October 16, 2020
OMER NIAZI is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.
A picture taken on November 10, 2019, shows an Iranian flag in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, during an official ceremony to kick-start works on a second reactor at the facility. - Bushehr is Iran's only nuclear power station and is currently running on imported fuel from Russia that is closely monitored by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
Omer Niazi contributed to this assessment, published by the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project and authored by Nicholas Carl and Kyra Rauschenbach. It examined Iran's construction of hardened underground nuclear infrastructure and its accumulation of low-enriched uranium far beyond the limits of the 2015 agreement, arguing that Tehran was building leverage for negotiations with an incoming US administration rather than pursuing a weapon.
Disclosure: This assessment was published by the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project and authored by Nicholas Carl and Kyra Rauschenbach, with contributions from Omer Niazi and others. Copyright is held by the publishing institution.
To cite this article: Carl, N., & Rauschenbach, K. (2020, November 20). Iran File: Iran Accelerates Nuclear Program Development. Critical Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute.
Copyright in this article is retained by the author. Published by the Council on International Law, Order, and Security. Quotation with attribution is welcome; republication in full requires permission. See our Terms of Use.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the Council, its staff, or its Board of Advisors.
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