Iran drew international condemnation this week with its announcement that it had begun installing new facilities to produce uranium in defiance of United Nations sanctions, says Damien McElroy in The Daily Telegraph.
At a recent ceremony to mark Iran’s nuclear day, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that 6,000 new centrifuges were being installed at a facility in Natanz. Greg Schulte, America’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the announcement reflected Iran’s “continuing violation of international obligations and refusal to address international concerns”, while the UK and the French called for “reinforced” sanctions.
TheWest fears that Iran is “pursuing a secret nuclear weapons agenda” and Tehran’s refusal to suspend the process has already been punished with three sets of UN Security Council sanctions, says David Byers in The Times. But Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is peaceful and designed to generate energy for a growing population.
Iran’s claims of new centrifuges should be viewed with scepticism, says Nazila Fathi and William Broad in the New York Times. David Albright, a former arms inspector and the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks nuclear proliferation, says that Iran’s 3,000 existing centrifuges appeared to be running poorly and that Ahmadinejad’s statement might be “political posturing“. He adds, however, that if Iran could get 9,000 centrifuges to run smoothly, it could make enough bomb fuel for between one and three nuclear weapons a year.
Whatever the truth, the announcement increases tension between America and Iran, says Stephen Lee Myers in The New York Times, and the Bush administration is refusing to rule out military action if Iran fails to meet international demands.