Tehran – Iran’s president claimed Sunday his nation is running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its nuclear program, reaching a goal that could add momentum to efforts to impose new U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic.
The claim appeared at odds with a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Thursday that put the number at close to 2,000. The International Atomic Energy Agency said enrichment had slowed and that Iran was cooperating with its nuclear probe.
“The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in remarks carried by the state television website.
Iran announced operating 3,000 centrifuges in April, but the IAEA said then that Iran had only 328 centrifuges going at its underground Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.
The U.N. Security Council has passed two sets of sanctions targeting Iranian individuals and businesses involved in the country’s nuclear and missile programs. The resolutions ordered countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology for the programs.
U.N. officials have suggested that Iran had slowed its program and increased its cooperation with the agency investigators to avert new sanctions. The report said Iran continued to produce only negligible amounts of nuclear fuel with its centrifuges, far below the level usable for nuclear warheads.
Ahmadinejad’s latest announcements appeared to mark a shift away from that strategy.
Iran’s ultimate stated goal for the Natanz facility, the only site open to full IAEA monitoring, is to run 54,000 centrifuges – enough for dozens of nuclear weapons a year. But Iran insists it wants to master the technology only to meet future power needs and argues it is entitled to enrich under a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty provision giving all pact members the right to develop peaceful programs.
