Iran on Path to Further Enrichment of Uranium

Iran has been enriching Uranium in their nuclear facilitiesusing centrifuges to produce reactor grade fuel, which is at a concentration of about 4-5% (the natural concentration of uranium is about 0.7%). Over time, they were able to produce a stockpile of 2 tons of the concentrated uranium. Iran then announced that they would further enrich this stock pile. A Ney York Times article describes:

...On Sunday, Feb. 7, Iran announced it would begin enriching its stockpiled uranium to 20 percent — ostensibly to make fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. Nuclear experts said that although this might sound like a leap, moving to 20 percent from 4 percent was actually a fairly easy step — not at all as demanding and time consuming as raising the level to 4 percent from 0.7 percent. And the ease of further enriching uranium once it is already enriched made the world take notice.

According to scientists in the article, it doesn't take much to continue enriching enriching uranium to levels needed for a bomb, in fact, the process gets easier as you get more concentrated. The concentration that uranium needs to be enriched to for use in bombs is about 90%. There is no doubt that Iran now has the capability to produce weapons grade uranium because they have all of the equipment and supplies that are necessary. This is a problem that world leaders will have to address in the near future before this gets out of hand. It will be much harder to negotiate when Iran has a nuclear bomb or two in their possession.