Tensions escalate as Iran continues to step up nuclear programme

Hundreds of workers in Iran have set up piping, control panels and electric cables for Tehran’s underground uranium enrichment plant, diplomats said yesterday.

It is the final step before installing equipment that countries fear could be used to make nuclear arms.

The move marks an escalation of the confrontation between Tehran and the world’s major powers over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme and will likely spur US efforts to sharpen existing UN sanctions slapped on Iran for its defiance of a Security Council demand that it freeze enrichment efforts.

A top Iranian nuclear official said UN inspectors have set up cameras in Natanz to monitor the activity.

Iran says it wants to develop enrichment to generate power, but the US and other countries fear Tehran will use the material for nuclear warheads.

‘‘This work is not necessary for a peaceful nuclear energy program but is needed to give Iran’s leaders the know-how to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons,’’ said Matt Boland, spokesman for the US delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Another diplomat accredited to the Vienna-based IAEA, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program, said hundreds of technicians and labourers had been ‘‘working feverishly’’ at the Natanz underground facility over the past few weeks.

The diplomats emphasised that the work at the plant was preliminary. But one said centrifuges already were being lowered by freight elevator into the facility, along with other equipment needed to assemble ‘‘cascades’’ — centrifuges in series that spin and re-spin uranium gas to the required level of enrichment. They said that, to their knowledge, no centrifuges had been set up by Thursday.