Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that the Islamic republic will ”soon join the club of countries that have nuclear technology”, state television reported.
The announcement came 15 days before the expiry of a United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to slam the brakes on its uranium enrichment programme — the focus of fears that the Islamic regime could acquire nuclear weapons.
”Iran will soon join the club of countries that have nuclear technology,” the president was quoted as saying in a speech in the north-east of the country.
”The equation will change in favour of the Iranian people,” Ahmadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad has also told the country to expect ”good news” later on Tuesday about the nuclear drive, amid reports the country has made key progress in uranium enrichment to make reactor fuel.
Enrichment is the process used to manufacture fuel for civil nuclear power stations but can be also be extended to manufacture the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
On March 29, the UN Security Council called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment to provide a watertight guarantee that its nuclear programme is peaceful, with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei asked to report on Iranian compliance after 30 days.
Iran categorically rejects charges that it is seeking atomic weapons and has so far rejected the ultimatum.
And in an interview with the Kuwait news agency KUNA, influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said a cascade of centrifuges — devices that spin at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium — had been operated at a facility in Natanz.
”We operated the first unit which comprises 164 centrifuges, gas was injected, and we got the industrial output,” Rafsanjani was quoted as saying.
”We must expand the operation of these devices in order to become a full industrial unit, as we still need dozens of such units to become a plant for uranium enrichment,” he said.
Meanwhile, United States President George Bush wants to settle the Iran nuclear crisis through diplomacy, he said on Monday, describing reports of plans to attack Iran as ”wild speculation”.
While the White House is still warning Iran about its uranium enrichment, which Washington and its allies believe hides a nuclear weapons programme, the administration went out of its way on Monday to play down reports of planning for military strikes.
”The doctrine of prevention is to work together to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
”I know we hear in Washington ‘prevention means force’,” he added. ”In this case, it means diplomacy, by the way. I read the articles in the newspapers this weekend — it was wild speculation.”
White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said, however, that Bush is not taking the military option off the table.
The Washington Post newspaper and New Yorker magazine had reported on the weekend about plans for possible military strikes.
The New Yorker said the US administration plans a bombing campaign against Iran, including the use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy the suspected main Iranian nuclear weapons facility.
The Washington Post said Bush is studying options for military strikes as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Iran over its nuclear programme.
Citing unnamed US officials and independent analysts, the newspaper said no attack appeared likely in the short term, but officials were using the threat to convince Iran that Washington is serious.
Military experts said that any military strike would be full of risk. European leaders have also spoken out against any immediate military threat in the dispute. — AFP
