The Development Of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile [Infographic]

The New York TimesNYT+0.4% has reported that President Trump sought options to attack Iran's primary nuclear facility in the coming weeks but he has been dissuaded from doing so by his senior advisors. Trump looked into his options after The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported a significant increase in Iran's stockpiles of nuclear material and it has emerged that its levels of enriched uranium are now 12 times the limit agreed in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Tehran has insisted that the country's nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. Despite that statement, the IAEA has warned that Iranian explanations for nuclear material stored at an undeclared sight are not credible. Under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was only allowed to produce 300kg (661lbs) of enriched uranium in the UF6 compound for a period of 15 years. Immediately after the JCPOA was agreed, Iran's low-enriched uranium stockpile declined drastically from 8,300kg to just 200kg and it fell as low as 80kg in mid-2017, according to IAEA data published by Bloomberg. Trump took the United States out of the deal on May 08, 2018 and signed a Presidential Memorandum ordering harsher sanctions to be reinstated. Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles grew slowly at first and the IAEA announced that they breached the agreed 300kg agreed limit in July of last year. Earlier this month, international inspectors reported that Iranian stockpiles have now grown to 2,442.9kg (5,385.6lb). If Iran chose to enrich that material to weapons grade, it is believed that it would be enough to create three atomic bombs. President-elect Joe Biden has signaled that he intends reviving the deal when he comes to office but recent IAEA reports show that this is going to be far from straightforward. *Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium by quarter (in kg) Statista

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