Iran proclaimed advances in nuclear know-how on Wednesday, including new centrifuges able to enrich uranium much faster, a move that may hasten a drift towards confrontation with the West over suspicions it is seeking the means to make atomic bombs.
Tehran was driving home its resolve to pursue a nuclear programme its hardline Islamic clerical leaders see as a pillar of power, protection and prestige despite Western sanctions that are inflicting increasing damage on its oil-based economy.
Iran also aimed to show that the tightening sanctions noose has failed to stop it making progress in nuclear technology and to firm its hand in any renewed negotiations with world powers.
“The era of bullying nations has past. The arrogant powers cannot monopolise nuclear technology. They tried to prevent us by issuing sanctions and resolutions but failed,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a live television broadcast.
“Our nuclear path will continue.”
However, Iran’s Arabic-language Al Alam television said the government had handed a letter to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressing readiness to “hold new talks over its nuclear programme in a constructive way”.
An Ashton spokeswoman confirmed receipt of the letter, saying she was evaluating it and would consult with the United States, Russia, China and other partners among the big powers.
Iranian officials have long refused to negotiate curbs on its programme, saying it aims solely to produce electricity for booming domestic demand in OPEC’s No. 2 oil-exporting state.
The most recent talks between world powers and Iran collapsed in January 2011 when they could not agree an agenda.
The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy and sanctions are ultimately judged futile in reining in its nuclear activity.
Underlining the high stakes and at times nervous confusion arising from the nuclear stand-off, Iran’s Oil Ministry denied a state media report that it had cut off oil exports to six European Union states. Brent crude oil prices jumped up $1 a barrel to $118.35 in reaction to the announcement.
With Western sanctions now spreading to block Iran’s oil exports and central bank financing of trade, Tehran has been resorting to barter to import staples like rice, cooking oil and tea, commodities traders say.
The nuclear achievements proclaimed by Tehran involved a new line of uranium enrichment centrifuge and the loading of its first domestically produced batch of fuel into a research reactor that is expected to soon run out of imported stocks.
Tehran has for some years been developing and testing new generations of centrifuges to replace an outdated, breakdown-prone model. In January it said it had successfully manufactured and tested its own fuel rods for use in nuclear power plants.
Ahmadinejad said the “fourth generation” of centrifuge would be able to refine uranium three times as fast as previously.
If Iran eventually succeeded in introducing modern centrifuges for production, it could significantly shorten the time needed to stockpile enriched uranium, which can generate electricity or, if refined much more, nuclear explosions.
State television aired live footage of Ahmadinejad loading Iranian-made fuel rods into the Tehran Research Reactor and called this “a sign of Iranian scientists’ achievements”.
The Tehran reactor produces radio-isotopes for use in medical treatments and agriculture.
Iran says it was forced to manufacture its own fuel for the Tehran reactor after failing to agree terms for a deal to obtain it from the West to replenish imported Argentinian stocks that will run out in the near future.
Analysts remained doubtful that Iran would be able to operate the research reactor with its own special fuel.
“As usual, the announcement surely is exaggerated. Producing the fuel plates … is not so hard. But the plates have to be tested for a considerable period before they can be used safely in the reactor,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“If Iran is really running the reactor with untested fuel plates, then my advice to the residents surrounding the building would be to move somewhere else. It will he unsafe.”
Spent fuel can be reprocessed into plutonium, the alternative key ingredient in atomic bombs. But Western worries about Iran’s nuclear programme have focused on its enrichment programme, which has accumulated enough material for up to several bombs, in the view of nuclear proliferation experts.
Analysts say the fuel rod development itself will not put Iran any closer to producing nuclear weapons, but could be a way of telling Tehran’s adversaries that time is running out if they want to find a negotiated solution to the dispute.
Iran appears to have overcome one serious recent obstacle to nuclear development by succeeding in neutralizing and purging the “Stuxnet” computer virus from its nuclear machinery, European and US officials and private experts told Reuters. Many believe Israel planted the virus.
