IAEA: Iran increasing uranium enrichment

IRAN has expanded its uranium enrichment programme instead of complying with a UN Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the UN nuclear watchdog agency said yesterday.

“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report, making public a finding that clears the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran.

The IAEA detailed recent activities showing Tehran expanding its enrichment efforts — setting up hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall, and bringing nearly nine tonnes of the gaseous feedstock into the facility in preparation for enrichment.

It added that Iranian officials had told the agency they would expand their centrifuge installations to have thousands of them ready by May.

The conclusion, while widely expected, was important because it could serve as the trigger for the council to start deliberating on new sanctions to punish Tehran for its intransigence over its nuclear programme.

The report, written by IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, also said Iran continues building both a reactor that will use heavy water and a heavy water production plant — also in defiance of the Security Council.

Both enriched uranium and plutonium produced by heavy water reactors can produce the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. Iran denies such intentions, saying it needs the heavy water reactor to produce radioactive isotopes for medical and other peaceful purposes and enrichment to generate energy.

The six-page report also said that agency experts remain “unable ... to make further progress in its efforts to verify fully the past development of Iran’s nuclear programme” due to lack of Iranian co-operation.

That, too, put it in violation of the Security Council, which on December 23 told Tehran to “provide such access and co-operation as the agency requests to be able to verify ... all outstanding issues” within 60 days.

With the United States bolstering its naval forces in the Gulf and cracking down on Iranians within Iraq it says are helping Shi’ite militias, concerns have grown that Washington might be planning military action.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said “the only sensible way” to solve the crisis was to pursue political solutions, but that he could not “absolutely predict every set of circumstances”.