There were a couple of items about Iran that I found noteworthy. In the first Iran is continuing to install centrifuges for refining uranium (either into fuel for nuclear reactors or, possibly, for weapons):
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran has begun installing 3,000 centrifuges in an expansion of its uranium enrichment program that brings the Islamic nation significantly closer to large-scale production of nuclear fuel, the president said Saturday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also claimed that the international community was caving in to Tehran’s demands to continue its nuclear program.
“Resistance of the Iranian nation in the past year forced them to retreat tens of steps over the Iran’s nuclear issue,” the semi-official Fars agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. Fars is considered to be close to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Iran has been locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program. The U.S. alleges that Tehran is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons, but Iran contends its program is for peaceful purposes including generating electricity.
Iran said earlier this year that it intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006, and then expand the program to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas into enriched material to produce nuclear fuel.
Uranium enrichment at low levels can be used to produce fuel to generate electricity but at higher levels can be use to make atomic bombs.
“We have started installing 3,000 centrifuges” at a plant in central Iran, Ahmadinejad told a group of students in Tehran on Saturday, according to Fars. He said the move, at a plant in central Iran, marks the “first step toward industrial production.
“We will be able to produce our nuclear fuel once we install 60,000 centrifuges,” he said.
Stay tuned.
