Iran has begun enriching uranium to a purity level of 20 percent using advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a pilot facility located underground near the city of Qom. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran made the public announcement on June 10, although it reported the news to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks before, according to NBC News.

Graham

Menendez

Sens. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) have introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. government to adopt a policy that would permit any Middle Eastern state access to nuclear fuel via a regional fuel bank, provided it agrees to abstain from uranium enrichment and reprocessing.

Modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear fuel bank in Kazakhstan, the proposed regional fuel bank would allow the commercial development of nuclear power throughout the Middle East while at the same time eliminating the need for dangerous and destabilizing domestic nuclear programs, according to a February 11 press release from the legislators.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, called on Iran on March 9 to cooperate immediately and fully with the IAEA and to provide prompt access to locations that it has refused to let agency inspectors visit. “The agency has identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations that have not been declared by Iran,” Grossi said in his first address to the IAEA’s Board of Governors since being named director general in December.