Iran on fresh enrichment drive, says new IAEA report

The IAEA report said Iran had resumed feeding UF6 gas, feedstock for nuclear fuel, into a pilot cascade of 164 centrifuge enrichment machines at Natanz on Tuesday after a five-week pause of test runs without UF6. That was the day European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited Tehran to hand over the package of incentives to mothball nuclear fuel production.

US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said in London that if the report was accurate it made for 8216;8216;very disturbing8217;8217; reading as it showed Iran was continuing to make progress in uranium enrichment.

The IAEA report, emailed to the 35 states on the IAEA8217;s governing board before a meeting next week, also said Iran had continued with installation of two more 164-centrifuge networks begun in April despite a UN Security Council resolution prohibiting it form doing so.

Meanwhile in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, Iran8217;s highest constitutional watchdog, said today that a package of incentives offered by six major powers would never stop Iran from making nuclear fuel.

8216;8216;Now they want to deprive us of many advantages. The package they have brought is a package that is good for themselves and is not appropriate for the Iranian people,8217;8217; Jannati told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

8216;8216;In short, we must have enrichment to the level of 3.5 to 5 perc ent and they have no choice but to accept it.8217;8217;