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The report offered no estimate of the new plant's capabilities but a senior international official familiar with the watchdog agency's work in Iran said that it appeared designed to produce about a ton of enriched uranium a year.
The official, as well as analysts, said that would be enough for a nuclear warhead but too little to fuel the nearly finished plant at the southern port of Bushehr and other civilian reactors Iran is planning to bring on line in the coming years.
"It won't (even) be able to produce a reactor's worth of fuel every 90 years, but it will be able to produce one bomb a year," said Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Strategic Security Programme of the Federation of American Scientist. "It does look strange."
The IAEA also noted that Iran's enrichment at the Natanz site - revealed by dissidents in 2002 and under agency monitoring - was stagnating, with output remaining at mid-2009 levels.
The report did not offer a reason. But the official suggested that nuclear experts previously working at Natanz could now be preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on the newly discovered site, called Fordo.
As early as three years ago, Iranian officials had announced that immediate plans for the Natanz site were to install about 8,000 enriching centrifuges, and today's report suggested that Tehran had reached that goal.
The 7-page report - the latest IAEA summary of what it knows about Iran - said that as of Nov 2, about 8,600 centrifuges had been set up but only about 4,000 were enriching - or 600 less than in September. Still, the official said output had been steady since June with about 100 kilograms - 220 pounds - of enriched uranium being produced a month.
The report said that Natanz had churned out close to 1,800 kilograms of low-enriched, or nuclear fuel-grade uranium by Nov 2 - close to the amount considered by experts that would be needed for two nuclear weapons.
The restricted document also noted that "for well over a year," Iran had stonewalled IAEA efforts to investigate allegations that it actively worked on a nuclear weapons programme.
Unless Tehran has a change of heart, the agency "will not be in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities," said the report.
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Mr. Hasan Abidi, Why you people can't think about country first, you mentioned about muslim brothers..for you guys relegion will come first..iran is athreat to a whole world, that we all know
Iran has every right to defend its territories and its people from any misadventures of illegitimate regime of Israel and biggest terror sponsor nation USA and its puppet allies. Iran should accelarate its pace of developing nuclear weapons. How Iran can be denied of having or developing nuclear arsenals as irresponsible nations such as USA, France, UK, and Israel have them and USA has demonstrated its irresponsible behavior by bombing Japan. Where was the international community when US&West occupied Iraq and waged war against Afghanistan? How long US & West will continue supporting Israel's illegitimate actions? The Wahabis of Saudi Arabia will never come forward to defend their muslim brothers but will continue to support terrorists like Al-Qaida & Taliban, etc. Iran should develop all that kinds of weaponary that US, West & Israel have and then only it will never be threatened or bullied by these terrorist nations.
Your point for the arming of Iran, Mr. Hasan, is exactly why the world cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. We try to pretend that we live in this nice little world in which everybody can be friends, but the fact is that the Iranians are against us here in the United States and our ally Israel, and we must never allow our enemies to have nuclear weapons. You call the Israeli government illegitimate, yet the elections in Iran were obviously illegitimate as well. Israel will always be hated no matter what they do because of their religion, and Iran is committed to destroying them because of that. Also, there is not one single person in the United States government today that was responsible for the bombing of Japan. How long will you continue to cite an event that happened over 60 years ago as proof of our evil? By your logic, the U.S. should stop Iran from having weapons because we are at war with Iran for the hostages taken from the embasy. If we continue to punish every country for every act of aggression they have ever committed, then we might as well have the entire world go to was against each other.