Diplomats Say That Iran's Former Secret Qom Nuclear Plant Is 7 Years Old

The AP reports that "Iran's recently revealed uranium enrichment hall is a highly fortified underground space that appears too small to house a civilian nuclear program, but large enough to serve for military activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday. Iran began building the facility near the holy city of Qom seven years ago, and after bouts of fitful construction could finish the project in a year, the diplomats said Both the construction timeline and the size of the facility - inspected last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency - are significant in helping shed light on Teheran's true nuclear intentions. Iran says it wants to enrich only to make atomic fuel for energy production, but the West fears it could retool its program to churn out fissile warhead material. One of the diplomats - a senior official from a European nation - said Thursday that the enrichment hall is too small to house the tens of thousands of centrifuges needed for peaceful industrial nuclear enrichment, but is the right size to contain the few thousand advanced machines that could generate the amount of weapons-grade uranium needed to make nuclear warheads." Tweet