Defiant Iran claims major steps in nuclear fuel

ALI AKBAR DAREINI, BRIAN MURPHY

Asso­ci­ated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — In defi­ant swipes at its foes, Iran said Wednes­day it is dra­mat­i­cally closer to mas­ter­ing the pro­duc­tion of nuclear fuel even as the U.S. weighs tougher pres­sures and Tehran’s sus­pected shadow war with Israel brings probes far beyond the Mid­dle East.

Iran fur­ther struck back at the West by indi­cat­ing it was on the verge of impos­ing a mid­win­ter fuel squeeze to Europe in retal­i­a­tion for a loom­ing boy­cott of Iran­ian oil, but denied reports ear­lier in the day that six nations had already been cut off.

The uncom­pro­mis­ing mes­sages from Iran, how­ever, came with a coun­ter­point. The offi­cial IRNA news agency said Iran’s top nuclear nego­tia­tor, Saeed Jalili, told Euro­pean Union for­eign pol­icy chief Cather­ine Ash­ton that Iran is ready to return to talks with the U.S. and other world powers.

The dual strat­egy — tak­ing nuclear steps while propos­ing more talks — has become a hall­mark of Iran’s deal­ings for years and some crit­ics have dis­missed it as a time-buying tac­tic. The advances claimed Wednes­day could likely feed these views.

In a live TV broad­cast, Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad was shown over­see­ing what was described as the first Iranian-made fuel rod inserted into a research reac­tor in north­ern Tehran. Sep­a­rately, the semi­of­fi­cial Fars agency reported that a “new gen­er­a­tion” of Iran­ian cen­trifuges — used to enrich ura­nium toward nuclear fuel — had gone into oper­a­tion at the country’s main enrich­ment facil­ity at Natanz in cen­tral Iran.

In Wash­ing­ton, the assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for Inter­na­tional Secu­rity and Non­pro­lif­er­a­tion, Tom Coun­try­man, dis­missed the Iran­ian claims of reach­ing a piv­otal moment. “The announce­ment today by Iran has much more to do with polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in Iran than it has to do with fac­tual devel­op­ments,” he said.

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said Iran’s “defi­ant acts” seek to “dis­tract atten­tion” from the dam­age brought by inter­na­tional sanctions.

Mean­while, Iran is fac­ing major new inter­na­tional com­pli­ca­tions: Accu­sa­tions of bring­ing an appar­ent covert con­flict with Israel to points stretch­ing from Thai­land and India to the for­mer Soviet repub­lic of Georgia.

Offi­cials in Israel ramped up alle­ga­tions that Iran was linked to inter­na­tional bomb plots, say­ing mag­netic “sticky” bombs found in a Bangkok house rented by Ira­ni­ans were sim­i­lar to devices used against Israeli envoys in a foiled attack in Geor­gia on Mon­day and a blast in New Delhi that injured four peo­ple, includ­ing a diplomat’s wife.

“In recent days, Iran’s ter­ror oper­a­tions are being laid bare for all,” said Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu, who con­vened his secu­rity cab­i­net. It included dis­cus­sions about “pre­ven­tive mea­sures” against Iran­ian threats, said a state­ment from Netanyahu’s office that did not elaborate.

Iran’s For­eign Min­istry spokesman, Ramin Mehman­parast, called the alle­ga­tions “base­less” and an attempt to push “con­spir­acy” the­o­ries to dis­credit Iran with its Asian part­ners, includ­ing major oil buyer India.

Iran, in turn, accused Israel of being behind clan­des­tine attacks that have claimed the lives of at least five mem­bers of Iran’s sci­en­tific com­mu­nity in the past two years, includ­ing a “sticky” bomb blast that killed a direc­tor at the Natanz labs last month.

Framed pho­tos of the five sci­en­tists were shown by Iran­ian TV before a speech by Ahmadine­jad, who was flanked by the flags of Iran and the country’s nuclear agency.

He repeated Iran’s goal of becom­ing a tech­no­log­i­cal bea­con for the Islamic world and insisted that sci­en­tific progress is the right of all nations. Here rests one of the biggest dilem­mas for the West. Iran has merged the nuclear pro­gram with its national iden­tity and is unlikely to make any con­ces­sions with­out huge incentives.

“I hope we reach the point where we will be able to meet all our nuclear needs inside the coun­try so we won’t need to extend our hand before oth­ers, specif­i­cally before the world’s das­tardly peo­ple,” Ahmadine­jad said. “For a gen­tle­man, for a chival­rous nation, the most dif­fi­cult moment is when he has a need to ask (for some­thing) from a das­tardly person.”

Iran also used the announce­ments as a care­fully crafted show of unity.

The fam­i­lies of the slain sci­en­tists attended the cer­e­monies. State TV showed the father of the sci­en­tist killed last month, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, click­ing on the com­puter to inau­gu­rate the advanced cen­trifuges inside the Natanz facil­ity. TV showed tears in the eyes of Roshan’s mother and wife when the father opened the project.

Ahmadine­jad put the young daugh­ter of slain elec­tron­ics stu­dent Dar­i­oush Reza­eine­jad on his knee and pat­ted her long hair.

The pur­ported new fron­tiers for Iran’s atomic pro­gram show­case what could be sig­nif­i­cant steps at becom­ing self-sufficient in cre­at­ing nuclear fuel — the cen­ter­piece of the dis­pute with the U.S. and its allies.

In the fuel cycle, mined ura­nium is processed into gas, then that gas is spun in cen­trifuges to purify it. Low-enriched ura­nium — at around 3.5 per­cent — is used to pro­duce fuel rods that power a reac­tor. But the same process can be used to pro­duce highly enriched ura­nium — at around 90 per­cent purity — that can be used to build a warhead.

Iran claims it only seeks reac­tors for energy and med­ical research.

The Tehran facil­ity where IRNA said the new fuel rods were installed is intended to pro­duce iso­topes for can­cer treat­ments. It requires fuel enriched to around 20 per­cent, con­sid­ered a thresh­old between low– and high-enriched uranium.

Iran began enrich­ing up to near 20 per­cent in Feb­ru­ary 2010 after attempts at a deal with the West to import the fuel rods broke down.

Iran­ian offi­cials have long spo­ken of intro­duc­ing faster, more effi­cient cen­trifuges at the Natanz facil­ity. The Fars report did not give fur­ther details, but Iran also says it also has sophis­ti­cated cen­trifuges in a new site built into a moun­tain­side south of Tehran and pos­si­bly imper­vi­ous to airstrikes.

A diplo­mat accred­ited to the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency, which mon­i­tors Iran’s known nuclear pro­grams said the “new gen­er­a­tion” of cen­trifuges appeared to be refer­ring to about 65 IR-4 machines that were recently set up at an exper­i­men­tal site at Natanz. The new model can churn out enriched mate­r­ial at a faster rate than the more rudi­men­tary IR-1 cen­trifuges, thou­sands of which are at work in Natanz pro­duc­ing low-enriched ura­nium, said the diplo­mat, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because the infor­ma­tion is privileged.

In still another devel­op­ment, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Orga­ni­za­tion, Moham­mad Abbasi, was quoted as say­ing Iran will open a new facil­ity to pro­duce “yel­low­cake,” which is con­cen­trated nat­ural ura­nium and is the foun­da­tion mate­r­ial in the process to make nuclear fuel. In the past, Iran has pur­chased most of its yel­low­cake abroad, includ­ing South Africa and China.

The U.S. and EU have tried to rein in Iran’s nuclear pro­gram with new boy­cotts and bank­ing restric­tions tar­get­ing Iran’s cru­cial oil exports, which accounts for about 80 per­cent of the country’s for­eign revenue.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion is now weigh­ing an even harsher blow: pos­si­bly seek­ing Iran’s removal from SWIFT, an inde­pen­dent finan­cial clear­ing­house that is cru­cial to the country’s over­seas oil sales. But such a move could push oil prices higher and under­cut frag­ile West­ern economies.

Iran pushed back at Europe.

State TV quoted For­eign Min­istry offi­cial Hasan Tajik as say­ing that six Euro­pean diplo­mats were sum­moned Wednes­day and told that Iran has no prob­lem replac­ing cus­tomers — an implied warn­ing that Tehran would carry out plans to cut off EU coun­tries imme­di­ately to pre-empt sanc­tions set to go into effect in July.

Con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion about the cut­off has been relayed by Iran­ian media through­out the day: first the full block­ade on six coun­tries, then a report car­ried by the semi­of­fi­cial Mehr agency say­ing that exports were cut to France and the Nether­lands with four other Euro­pean coun­tries receiv­ing ulti­ma­tums to sign long-term con­tracts with Iran.

Iran­ian offi­cials say an imme­di­ate cut­off will hit Euro­pean nations before they can line up new sup­pli­ers, and that Tehran has already found buy­ers for the 18 per­cent share of its oil that goes to Europe.

In Vienna, Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov crit­i­cized the U.S. and the EU for insti­tut­ing “one-sided sanc­tions” on Tehran that “erode uni­fied action against Iran’s nuclear program.”

At the same time, he said the sus­pi­cion — nur­tured by years of Iran­ian secrecy — that Tehran is covertly work­ing on a nuclear arms pro­gram “must be clar­i­fied with­out any doubt.”

In Bangkok, Thai offi­cials held three Ira­ni­ans rounded up after a cache of explo­sives det­o­nated acci­den­tally in their home. Bomb dis­posal teams combed the dam­aged house while secu­rity forces sought an Iran­ian woman they said had orig­i­nally rented it.

Thai author­i­ties have not dis­closed any poten­tial tar­gets for the explosives.

Israeli defense offi­cials, how­ever, believe the Iran­ian men were plot­ting to attack the Israeli ambas­sador in Thai­land, Israel’s Chan­nel 10 TV reported. It said the inves­ti­ga­tion was still ongo­ing and its con­clu­sions were not final.

In a reflec­tion of how the attacks caught Israel off guard, the Israeli Counter Ter­ror­ism Bureau last month lifted a travel warn­ing to Bangkok after Thai author­i­ties arrested a sus­pect with alleged links to Hezbol­lah. The warn­ing was issued Jan. 13 and lifted less than two weeks later.

The bureau lifted a sim­i­lar travel advi­sory for Israelis going to Geor­gia in November.

Posted by AP News on Feb 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.