Iran has the technology to enrich uranium to the levels required to fuel a medical research reactor, but would be better able to secure such fuel more quickly via a deal with the West, experts said Monday.
The Islamic republic urgently needs the fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that makes radioisotopes for medical purposes such as cancer treatment.
But Iran so far seems reluctant to enter into a United Nations-brokered deal which would require it ship its own stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia for further processing.
Iran sees such a deal as a ruse by the West to confiscate its stockpiled uranium and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now ordered the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization to start enriching the uranium to 20% its own.
Some observers have expressed doubt whether Iran has mastered the enrichment process sufficiently to be able to produce the fuel it requires.
"They would be capable of doubling their uranium production overnight. But at the same time, they don't appear to have the technical capacity to turn the 20% enriched uranium into the fuel rods for their research reactor," a western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Karim Pakzad, an expert at the IRIS institute for strategic and international relations in Paris, saw Ahmadinejad's comments as a "bluff, because the Iranian government is weakened domestically."
The Iranian leader was "trying to pressure" the West into accepting Iran's demands for a fuel swap, Pakzad argued.
Nevertheless, other experts believe Iran does have the technology to enrich to higher levels.
"The technology for enriching uranium is basically the same whether you are enriching it at 3.5% for use in power reactors, or 20% for use in the Tehran research reactor, or 93% for use in nuclear weapons," said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
U.K. academic Elahe Mohtasham, a specialist in nuclear non-proliferation issues who has worked at the Foreign Policy Centre and the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, agreed.
"It's not difficult to go from 3.5% to 20% because it uses the same technology."
She added that "Only very few countries, such as France, can convert the uranium into fuel rods. Neither Iran nor the IAEA has ever indicated Iran can make its own rods."
Diplomats close to the Vienna-based watchdog said they believed Iran would indeed inform the IAEA if it really did start enriching uranium to higher levels.
The Iranians had cooperated so far in the surveillance and monitoring by U.N. inspectors of its uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, and legally speaking, they would still be within their safeguards agreement if they were wanted to enrich to higher levels, as long as they informed the IAEA beforehand, the diplomats said.
"If they were to try to do this surreptitiously, the IAEA would get wind of it pretty quickly and then they (the Iranians) would have a safeguards problem," one diplomat said.
And another diplomat pointed out: "They'd get the 20% enriched uranium quicker through a deal rather than enriching it on their own."