WarSclerotic

Iran to Build More Enrichment Plants – NYTimes.com.

PARIS — A senior Iranian official said on Monday that his country planned to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plants — two of them within the next year — and had identified “close to” 20 sites for such facilities.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, also said the plants would use a new kind of centrifuge, but did not provide details.

His remarks came just days after United Nations nuclear inspectors said they had extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead.

Coupled with that conclusion, Iran’s latest affirmation of intent to expand its nuclear capacity seemed likely to further deepen Tehran’s dispute with the United States and other world powers over its nuclear program. Earlier this month, Iran also began processing uranium to a higher level of enrichment, closer to — but still far below — weapons grade.

Iran has made similar claims about its ambitions to build more enrichment plants in the past and it is not clear whether it has the capability to fulfill its pledges in the near future.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the U.N. nuclear oversight body, had no immediate comment on the report.

According to the semiofficial ISNA news agency in Tehran, Mr. Salehi said Iranian ministers had decided last December on a plan to greatly expand the country’s nuclear enrichment program to supply fuel for planned electricity generation.

Western officials fear that Iran’s nuclear program is designed to build a bomb, dismissing Iran’s insistence that it is for peaceful purposes permitted under international law.

Mr. Salehi was quoted as saying that “nearly 20 locations” for building new enrichment plants had been identified, but did not say where.

Iran’s nuclear fuel needs, he said, required an initial 10 new enrichment plans with the same capacity as its current facility at Natanz, south of Tehran.

“The 10 enrichment plants will be constructed in a way that they are protected against any attack,” ISNA quoted the official as saying, an apparent reference to Iranian fears that the United States or Israel might attack its nuclear plants.

Iran “may start construction” on two of the sites, as ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the Iranian year beginning March 21, ISNA quoted Mr. Salehi as saying.

The announcement came as the United States sought to build an international consensus — resisted so far by China in particular — to back more stringent sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which runs the nuclear program.

Iran has insisted that it is prepared to suspend enrichment in return for imported fuel rods. But it has laid down conditions for the exchange that the United States and its allies do not accept.

The first public word on Iran’s plan to build more plants came last November when Tehran refused to comply with a demand by the United Nations nuclear agency to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant and said it would construct 10 more such plants.

At that time, nuclear experts said that even if Tehran proceeded with a plan to build 10 enrichment plants, it was doubtful Iran could execute the project for years, or even decades.

This entry was posted on February 22, 2010 at 11:22 AM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.