By ROULA KHALAF and GARETH SMYTH
Iran said yesterday it had taken a significant step towards mastering the nuclear technology, in defiance of western attempts to curb its nuclear ambitions.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad announced on national television that Iran had joined "the nuclear countries of the world", describing this as a "historical achievement".
He said Tehran would go on to produce industrial fuel but insisted the purpose remained energy production, not nuclear weapons.
Earlier, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Iranian president and head of the powerful Expediency Council, told the Kuwait news agency that Tehran had enriched uranium at low levels from a cascade of 164 centrifuges, a move experts said marked a new breakthrough.
Yesterday's announcements came two weeks after the UN Security Council called on Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment work, in the hope of preventing it from mastering the technology that could be adapted to make nuclear weapons.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is due in Tehran today and will report on Iranian compliance to the Security Council at the end of the month. The Iranian statements coincide with a raging debate in Washington over recent reports that the US is considering military strikes against Iranian nuclear installations. Reacting to the reports from Tehran, the White House last night warned that Iran was moving in the "wrong direction".
Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said Iran intended to have 3,000 centrifuges in use by next March. He said Iran was "completing" a process "for producing nuclear fuel for power plants using low-enriched uranium at between 3.5 and 5 per cent. This enrichment level is used for the production of fuel for nuclear reactors while much higher levels of enrichment are needed for atomic weapons".
Nuclear experts cautioned that although Iran may have taken a significant step forward, it could still be years away from acquiring the capability to produce the industrial scale and highly enriched uranium needed for nuclear bombs.
Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear non-proliferation expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the cascade - the arrangement of centrifuges - would have to run for a sustained period of time before it could be said to work properly. But he said Iran was creating a new "reality" that the world community would have to deal with.
Although Iran's announcement will alarm western governments, it could also facilitate a diplomatic climbdown. Iran could announce that having achieved this level of expertise it is now ready to suspend further enrichment.
