Iran yesterday defied international outcry and a threat of sanctions by announcing that it would push ahead with plans for a huge underground uranium enrichment plant with tens of thousands of high-speed centrifuges.
A day after proclaiming the "historic" achievement of mastering the technology to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel, Iranian officials dismissed criticism from the United States, Europe and even Russia and China.
The UN Security Council has called on Iran to halt its enrichment programme by the end of the month but Teheran has so far responded by accelerating it.
"Iran's nuclear activities are like a waterfall which has begun to flow. It cannot be stopped," an unnamed senior Iranian official told Reuters.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a televised speech on Tuesday, proclaimed that Iran had made its first sample of fuel-grade enriched uranium and "joined the group of those countries which have nuclear technology".
Yesterday Iranian officials greeted the arrival of the chief international nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, by laying out plans to speed up the uranium enrichment programme.
Mohammad Saeedi, Iran's deputy nuclear chief, said his country would expand the experimental "cascade" of 164 enrichment centrifuges to a plant with 3,000 machines by the end of the year.
(source)
