Iran has announced plans to enrich its uranium stockpile from 3.5% to 20%. However, the low enriched uranium is more than sufficient for a civilian power plant. While 
higher enriched uranium can be used in medical reactors – the stated purpose of the Iranian regime – there are serious concerns that the actual goal in higher enrichment is to make weapons of mass destruction.
There are a number of very worrisome issues with Iran’s nuclear program. First, there’s no need for the Iranians to enrich fuel for civilian energy purposes, since the fuel for the Busehr reactor is being provided by the Russians. Also, although the Iranian regime would say mastering nuclear enrichment may be a matter of national pride, it doesn’t make fiscal sense for the second largest oil producer in the Middle-East to be developing an extraordinarily expensive nuclear program. Also compounded by the brutal economic difficulties the country finds itself in.
Regarding the claims of medical research, the LA Times reported that “only France and Argentina have the facilities to turn the material into the fuel plates for the [medical] reactor.” Unless some agreement can be reached with these countries, Iran would be left with a stockpile of useless material.
While getting to 3.5% enrichment is a major technological feat, enriching to 20% “would be going most of the rest of the way to weapon-grade uranium," as David Albright, an official with Washington's Institute for Science and International Security, told the Associated Press. On top of this, it was reported months ago that Iran possessed enough uranium—if further enriched—to make a nuclear bomb.
Former CIA director Jim Woolsey said in a 2007 hearing before the House:
“The traces of highly-enriched (not just fuel grade) uranium, their deception, their heavy water plant and other indicators brand their program as one designed to develop nuclear weapons even in the absence of considering their rhetoric about destroying Israel and ending the world”
If Iran develops a nuclear bomb, it would be disastrous. The Iranian regime is the largest state-sponsor of terror around the world; imagine what this would mean if they could now arm their affiliates with WMDs. Iran itself possesses missiles that can reach into Europe and through much of the Middle East. If the country gets the bomb, you would also likely see an arms race emerge among other regimes in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia who has also been active in exporting its extremist ideology globally.
This is not a question of a peaceful ally pursuing this technology in contravention of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is the suspect pursuit of this technology by a regime that is openly hostile to the West and what it stands for.
