The Islamic Republic of Iran now has enough nuclear material to create a single nuclear weapon, nuclear experts tell the New York Times.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

Several experts said that was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

Oddly enough, considering that Iran has had no problem ignoring the international community up to this point, I doubt that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the rest of the Iranian leadership would have trouble kicking out inspectors and breaching international agreements. As the Times notes, Iran has threatened to remove inspectors in the past. The purification appears to be Iran’s greatest hurdle at this point.

“They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” said Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades. “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”…

Siegfried S. Hecker of Stanford University and a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory said the growing size of the Iranian stockpile “underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option.”…

“They have a weapon’s worth,” Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said in an interview.

The IAEA says that Iran continues to evade questions about its nuclear program, to no one’s great surprise.

Via HAH.