In the last two years, Iran has been deploying advanced centrifuges in violation of the limits in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), following a lull of three years created by those limits. Starting in late 2020 or early 2021, it dramatically increased the number of deployed advanced centrifuges.
Iran’s rapid deployment of many advanced centrifuges in 2019, including many new models, suggests that centrifuge development work continued during the period when the JCPOA was in force and accelerated secretly at least as soon as the United States ended its participation in the JCPOA in May 2018.
Iran’s advanced centrifuges have achieved speeds less than optimal for carbon fiber rotors. However, the IR-s may be testing at these higher speeds, say of the order of 700 meters per second. Achieving these higher speeds is difficult but would allow significant increases in enrichment output.
Iran plans to assemble centrifuges in a deeply buried underground replacement facility near Natanz, with tunnel construction progressing visibly as of early this year
