09 June 2011

TEHRAN/VIENNA: Iran will shift its production of higher grade uranium to an underground bunker and triple its production capacity, it said Wednesday in a defiant response to accusations it is trying to produce atomic bombs.

This year, under the supervision of the [International Atomic Energy] Agency, we will transfer 20 percent enrichment from the Natanz site to the Fordow site and we will increase the production capacity by three times, the head of Irans atomic energy agency, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, told reporters after a Cabinet meeting, the state broadcaster IRIB reported.

Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow site, in a mountain bunker, in September 2009, after Western intelligence had detected it and said it was evidence of covert nuclear work.

The decision to move production there and increase output drew immediate condemnation from the West, which has imposed a series of sanctions on Iran to try to force it to halt enrichment a process that can make weapons material if done to a much higher level.

This announcement is a provocation, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Iran has always denied it is developing nuclear weapons and says it is enriching uranium for electricity production and medical applications.

The Vienna-based IAEA said it had only learned of the plan from media reports. Iran has not yet informed the agency of any such decision, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said.

Iranian media portrayed the announcement as a defiant response to tightened sanctions and IAEA chief Yukiya Amanos assertion Monday that he had received new evidence of possible military dimensions to Irans nuclear work. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Amano of taking orders from Washington.

After Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that no incentive from world powers could persuade Iran to give up enrichment, President Barack Obama said further sanctions were likely.

Iran certainly is raising the stakes, said Mark Fitzpatrick, a leading proliferation expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

There is absolutely no justification for producing any more 20 percent enriched uranium at all, since any reactors that would use it are far off into the future, he said.

Tripling the production rate would be highly provocative.

Iran says it needs 20 percent uranium to make fuel for a medical research reactor after talks on a nuclear fuel swap under which other countries would have supplied the higher grade fuel broke down.

After we increase the production capacity in Fordow by three times, then we will stop the 20 percent section of the Natanz site and will transfer it completely to Fordow, Abbasi-Davani said, adding the transfer would start this year.

The shift from Natanz, near Isfahan in central Iran, to the Fordow site near Qom, south of the capital, will shield the enrichment work from airstrikes that Israel and the United States have not ruled out as a last-ditch way to stop Iran getting the bomb, Fitzpatrick said.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. and its allies pushed ahead with efforts to bring Syria before the U.N. Security Council for failure to cooperate with the IAEA, despite opposition from China and Russia.

A draft of a resolution finds Syria in non-compliance with its obligations with IAEA requirements to allow inspectors access to all nuclear facilities to ensure they are not being used for military purposes.

The draft criticizes Syrias lack of cooperation with repeated requests for access by the U.N. nuclear agency to information about a facility at Dair Alzour that appears to have been a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium, which is used to arm nuclear weapons. The site was destroyed by Israel in 2007.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.