Reporting from Beirut —
A steady expansion of Iran’s nuclear program was interrupted at least briefly this month by the complete shutdown of its uranium enrichment production, according to an analysis of a report Tuesday by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.
Despite international sanctions and reports in the Western media that a computer virus had damaged sensitive equipment, Iran ramped up its production rate of enriched uranium and apparently worked out technical glitches to increase the number of delicate centrifuges producing the nuclear fuel, the latest quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicates.
But during a Nov. 16 visit, a cryptic footnote in the report says, inspectors observed that no uranium was being fed into any centrifuges, though Iranians claimed Monday that they were operating again within days. Some observers have speculated that a virus called Stuxnet may have caused the shutdown, claims rejected as “lies” on Tuesday by Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear program.
