Iran has started moving nuclear material to an underground facility for the pursuit of sensitive atomic activities, a UN nuclear agency report showed, a development likely to add to Western suspicions Tehran is trying to build a weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency document also said Iran had continued to stockpile low-enriched uranium (LEU) and one prominent US think-tank said it had enough of the material for four nuclear weapons if it refines it further. The information that Iran last month moved a “large cylinder” with LEU to the Fordow subterranean site was included in the UN body's most comprehensive report yet pointing to military aspects of Tehran's nuclear program. The main finding in the IAEA report, which was leaked Tuesday, was that Iran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear warhead and that secret weapons-relevant research may continue. It may pave the way for further Western sanctions on the major oil producer. France warned Wednesday that Tehran faced unprecedented punitive measures if it refused to cooperate with the IAEA over its nuclear program. “No unbiased observer can cling to the pretension that Iran's nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, said. The IAEA report also contained updated information about Iran's uranium enrichment - the part of Iran's nuclear work that has most worried the West as refined uranium can be used for arms if processed further. Iran's decision in early 2010 to raise the level of some enrichment from the 3.5 percent purity needed for normal power plant fuel to 20 percent worried Western states that saw this as bringing it closer to the 90 percent needed for a bomb. Iran's main enrichment plant is located near the central town of Natanz. But the country announced in June it would move its higher-grade activity to Fordow, offering better protection against any military attacks.
