Special to WorldTribune.com

JERUSALEM — Iran is said to have developed an advanced gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment.

Israel’s intelligence community has determined that Iran was using its nuclear agreement with P5+1 to continue research and development of highly-capable centrifuges.

Officials said the centrifuges were designed to rapidly produce weapons-grade enriched uranium.

“Now they’re developing, as we speak, they’re developing centrifuges that are supposed to be 15 times more effective and more efficient than the centrifuges that they have today,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “That will enable them to leap-frog the distance and the time from low enrichment of uranium to high enrichment like that.”

In an address on Feb. 18, Netanyahu, who directs the intelligence community, said Teheran has not rolled back its nuclear program. The prime minister cited enhanced centrifuges, heavy water reactor and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“If Iran perches itself as a threshold state in which it has all the elements of a nuclear weapon in place, they’ll just have to do one little twist of the knob to get final enrichment of fissile material that is the core of a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said. “Then all they’ll have to do is take these components from one side of a room and another side of a room, put them together and in a very short time, days or weeks or perhaps even hours, they’d have a nuclear weapon.”

Netanyahu did not provide details of Iran’s centrifuge program. But
officials said the Teheran regime took the Pakistani-origin IR-1 centrifuge
and upgraded the machine to at least four times enrichment capacity.

Iran has developed a fleet of 19,000 centrifuges in addition to the
advanced machines. Netanyahu said Teheran’s nuclear weapons program was set
back by its agreement with P5+1 for four weeks.

“We’ve made a calculation,” Netanyahu said. “How much time has been
saved by the interim deal? How much has Iran regressed by agreeing to
distill or to dilute the 20 percent enriched uranium that they have to 3.5
percent? Well, given everything that they’re preparing, the 19,000
centrifuges that they have in place, and the advanced centrifuges that they
continue to develop under the deal, the sub-total of what they’ve been sent
back in time is four weeks.”

  Benjamin Netanyahu, enriched uranium, IR-1 centrifuge, Israeli intel: Iran can use new centrifuge to ‘leap-frog’ enrichment capability, P5+1 agreement