By Ali Akbar Dareini
The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's hard-line president said Tuesday the country "has joined the club of nuclear countries" by successfully enriching uranium for the first time, a key process in what Iran maintains is a peaceful energy program.
The announcement from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was certain to heighten international tensions surrounding Iran's nuclear program. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment by April 28 because of suspicions the program is designed to make nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad warned the West that trying to force it to abandon uranium enrichment would "cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians."
The head of the U.N. nuclear-watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, was heading to Iran today for talks aimed at resolving the standoff. The timing of the announcement suggested Iran wanted to present him with a fait accompli and argue it cannot be expected to give up a program showing progress.
The White House, which is pressing for U.N. sanctions against Iran, said the enrichment claims "show that Iran is moving in the wrong direction."
"Defiant statements and actions only further isolate the regime from the rest of the world," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Britain's Foreign Office issued a statement repeating the United Nations' call for a halt to enrichment and warned, "if Iran does not comply, the Security Council will revisit the issue."
The Bush administration says that Iran's hard-line religious leadership is too dangerous to be trusted with nuclear-enrichment technology that could be used to build a bomb.
The New Yorker magazine reported this week that the Bush administration has drawn up plans for a military strike that could include the use of nuclear "bunker-busting" bombs to destroy Iranian underground facilities.
The White House dismissed the report as exaggerated and insisted it is committed to reaching a diplomatic solution.
Patrick Cronin, a nonproliferation specialist at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former senior Bush administration official, said Iran is playing a game of brinkmanship. He cited fanfare that accompanied Iran's announcement Tuesday along with previous statements by Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be wiped off the map and suggesting that the Holocaust was exaggerated.
"Iranian leaders have said some outrageous things and yet, however outrageous, the country is too big to ignore, and the problem is too complex to settle easily," Cronin added. "Certainly, walking away from Iran doesn't settle it."
Uranium enrichment can produce either fuel for a nuclear-energy reactor — as Iran says it seeks — or the material needed for an atomic warhead.
Tuesday's announcement does not mean Iran is immediately capable of doing either. It has succeeded only in getting a series of 164 centrifuges to work in the enrichment process, and thousands are needed for a workable program.
But successfully carrying out the complicated and delicate process even on a small scale would be a breakthrough, and Iran's nuclear chief said the program would be expanded to 3,000 centrifuges by the end of the year.
Ahmadinejad made his announcement at a nationally televised ceremony clearly aimed at drumming up popular Iranian support. He addressed an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in an ornate hall in one of Iran's holiest cities, Mashhad.
Before he spoke, screens on the stage showed footage of nuclear facilities and scientists at work. A troupe in traditional costumes danced, waving vials said to contain yellowcake — purified uranium — that were to be kept at a shrine in the city.
"I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," Ahmadinejad said. The crowd broke into cheers of "Allahu akbar," or "God is great."
Ahmadinejad said the West "has to respect Iran's right for nuclear energy."
He said Iran wanted to operate its nuclear program under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and within its rights and the regulations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
According to the IAEA, 31 countries have nuclear-power plants either in operation or under construction.
In Vienna, Austria, officials of the IAEA, whose inspectors are in Iran, declined to comment on Ahmadinejad's statement.
But a diplomat familiar with Iran's enrichment program said it appeared to be accurate. He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss information restricted to the agency.
Speaking before the president, Iran's nuclear chief — Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh — told the audience that Iran has produced 110 tons of uranium gas, the feedstock that is pumped into centrifuges for enrichment.
The amount is nearly twice the 60 tons that Iran said last year that it had produced, an amount that former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright said would be enough to produce up to 20 nuclear bombs if Iran developed the capacity.
Aghazadeh also said a heavy-water nuclear reactor, under construction near Arak in central Iran, will be completed by early 2009. U.S. officials fear that the spent fuel from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in a bomb.
The IAEA is due to report to the U.N. Security Council on April 28 whether Iran has met its demand for a halt to uranium enrichment. If Iran fails to comply, the United States and Europe are pressing for sanctions against Iran, a step Russia and China have opposed.
