Iran Says It Will Go Ahead With Nuclear Enrichment

(Feb. 8) – Iran says it will begin enriching its uranium to a higher level on Tuesday to power a medical reactor, a measure that brought immediate calls for tougher sanctions from the U.S, France and Russia, which fear Tehran aims to produce nuclear weapons.

The decision was contained in a letter that Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iranian envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency, handed over today in Vienna. It follows a statement on Sunday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying he had personally ordered Iran's uranium to be increased to 20 percent from its present 3.5 percent.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at a news conference in Paris, said all of Washington's attempts to get Iran to end to its nuclear program "have been rejected" and that exerting pressure through sanctions seemed the "only path that is left to us at this point."

Similar remarks were made by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. In Moscow, a leading lawmaker in Parliament, Konstantin I. Kosachev, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as urging the international community to prepare "serious measures."

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said, "The right response is to impose decisive and permanent sanctions on Iran."

The enriched uranium would be used to power a medical research reactor, Soltanieh was quoted by news agencies as saying. "We cannot leave hospitals and patients desperately waiting for radio isotopes" being produced at the Tehran plant to be used in cancer treatment, he said, according to The Associated Press.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said today that Iran intends to add 10 uranium enrichment plants in the next year, Reuters reported, but it added that many experts doubt the country has the ability to carry out such a plan so soon.

Iran has consistently denied that it intends to produce nuclear weapons, saying it needs to enrich uranium to power its planned nuclear reactor network.

Talks with Western countries to send its low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed into fuel rods -- which other countries see as a way of controlling Iran's ability to produce nuclear-weapons-grade uranium -- have gone back and forth. Agreement seemed possible in October but later fell apart.

Today Salehi said Iran would halt production of the enriched material if it could import 20 percent enriched uranium for the Tehran reactor, Reuters reported.

Iran announced a new deal Friday, but the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said later that no new proposals had been presented, and Gates immediately urged the West to join in imposing new sanctions on Iran.

Today's announcement could be seen as a move by Ahmadinejad to reopen talks and to seek better terms for Tehran, The New York Times reported.

The announcement, however, was described by David Albright, head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, as "potentially very serious."

A weapon small enough to put on a missile would require uranium enriched to more than 90 percent, he was quoted by The Guardian as saying, adding that it would be much easier to get from 20 percent to 90 percent than it would be to get to 20 percent.

Creating the specialized fuel rods for the reactor, however, could take Iran years, the Times reported.