WASHINGTON — Just days before Iran enters its first nuclear talks with the West since the summer, international nuclear inspectors said Thursday that the country has begun installing a new generation of equipment that should give it the ability to produce nuclear fuel much faster.
The installation — at Iran's main plant for uranium enrichment, located in the desert at Natanz — came after a half-decade of delays exacerbated by Western sanctions and sabotage. The new centrifuges are four to five times more powerful than an aging model that Iran has used for years. The advance has worried American, European and Israeli officials because it would make it easier for Iran to race toward making fuel for nuclear weapons, if it decided to do so.
Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, called the installation of the advanced machines "yet another provocative step" and "a further escalation" in Iran's continuing violation of the United Nations demand that Tehran suspend its program of uranium enrichment.
But even as Iran installed the more powerful equipment, evidence collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that the Iranian authorities are deliberately slowing the accumulation of the medium-enriched uranium that could most quickly be converted to bomb fuel. According to a new report by the agency, much of that production has been diverted to make specialized fuel for a research reactor.
The new report says Iran has diverted about 40 percent of its growing stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium into an oxide form that can be used to make fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. So far, the report said, Iran used the collected material to produce at least five fuel assemblies.
The result is that Iran has delayed the day when it could reach what Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, defined as his latest "red line" beyond which Iran would not be allowed to pass: the accumulation of enough medium-enriched fuel to make a single nuclear weapon. At the time Mr. Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations last fall, it appeared that Iran would reach that point — about 240 kilograms (or 530 pounds) of uranium, enriched to 20 percent purity — by early this summer.
If production remains at roughly the same rate, it appears that date will now slip into the fall, allowing more time for diplomatic progress.
Mr. Netanyahu's office said nothing about that apparent slowing when it released a statement quoting the prime minister as saying the findings were "a very grave report which proves that Iran is continuing to make rapid progress toward the red line." It added that "the first subject" Mr. Netanyahu will discuss with President Obama during his planned visit to Israel next month is preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.
The inspectors' report also indicated there was no evidence of any explosion or other setback at the deep-underground nuclear facility called Fordo, which is regularly visited by inspectors. Reports, fueled by a right-wing Web site with ties to the Iranian opposition, had suggested a major explosion at the site that crippled its equipment. That report, which appeared in a number of European newspapers, now appears to have been false.
The report said that Iran, in addition to deploying new centrifuges, added 2,255 of the older models at Natanz, the biggest such jump in years.
The new centrifuges are known as IR-2, short for Iranian second generation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disclosed research on the spinning machinery more than six years ago, boasting that it would quadruple Iran's enrichment powers.
Testing the new centrifuges at the Natanz site began in early 2008, and reached an advanced stage at the pilot plant in 2011. But until recently, technical problems had delayed their introduction into the cavernous underground halls of the nearby production plant, which is roughly half the size of the Pentagon.
One mystery is why Iran is installing these centrifuges at Natanz. It is just barely underground, and vulnerable to air attack. It is also the plant that was struck by a series of American and Israeli cyberattacks, part of a classified program called "Olympic Games" that resulted in a temporary setback.
Centrifuges spin extraordinarily fast to accumulate the rare form of uranium that can fuel atom bombs or nuclear reactors.
The IR-2 is based on Pakistan's second-generation model. The rotor of the Pakistani machine, made of superhard steel, can spin much faster than the original model, speeding the pace of enrichment.
But Iran had great difficulty building the machines and obtaining the special steel. Mostly in secret, it instead developed its own version. The fact that it is partly indigenous signals that the Iranians have achieved new levels of technical expertise.
Western experts say the IR-2 is roughly half the height of Iran's original machine but spins twice as fast. Its rotor is made of carbon fibers, which Iran has also experienced difficulty making and importing because of Western sanctions.
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