Iran's regime likes anniversaries. This month it celebrated 40 years since the U.S. embassy hostage crisis by unveiling new nuclear centrifuges and redoing anti-American murals at the site of the former embassy. In May, it marked one year since the United States left the 2015 nuclear deal by beginning its own steady departure from the agreement.
But the past week's anniversary surprise is much more momentous. On Nov. 5, Tehran announced it would reactivate its Fordow enrichment facility, almost exactly a decade after United Nations inspectors demanded Iran close the recently discovered, illegally constructed site. Just as Fordow rang alarm bells back then, this latest news must spur more concerted efforts to address Iran's accelerating approach to nuclear weapons.
This is the fourth in Iran's unfolding series of ultimatums for Europe to offset the pain of U.S. sanctions, otherwise Tehran increasingly violates the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) every 60 days. The first escalations in May and July upped its uranium stockpile and enrichment level, initiating gradual reductions in the "breakout" time to produce enough fissile material for a bomb.
As the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) assessed this summer, by themselves these moves - although concerning - would still enable inspectors to detect a breakout attempt for the foreseeable future.
Fordow is worrisome for multiple reasons independent of how it is reactivated. Fordow is better designed and built than Natanz to withstand bunker busters - helping explain why the JCPOA prohibits enrichment there, but not at Natanz.
This would cut breakout time far more precipitously than any move thus far, but it also likely would be detected by inspectors. Therefore, any attempt to block inspectors, as the regime has mulled recently, would be equally alarming.
As Iran began enriching near 20 percent at Fordow in 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a literal red line before the world, with the implicit threat of preventive military action. Tehran took the hint and deflected its own progress toward a bomb.
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