In an expected move nonetheless seen as a political signal to Washington, Iran said it stepped up its uranium enrichment program Friday, even as a divided UN Security Council became bogged down over a European draft resolution to impose sanctions on Tehran.
President Bush called the report that Iran had doubled its enrichment capacity "speculation" but said a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable.
Iran's injection of gas into a second network of 164 centrifuges, reported by the Iranian Students News Agency, marked the country's first known uranium enrichment since February.
Doubling Iran's capacity would mean it still is nowhere close to churning out enough uranium to fuel a reactor. Tehran has said it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its pilot complex in Natanz by year's end, but it would take 54,000 centrifuges to fuel a reactor.
In addition, Friday's ISNA report said the second cascade, like the first, would produce enriched uranium at a 4.5 percent "research" level. Enrichment levels can be an indication of the use of the uranium. The usual level of enriched uranium fuel is 5 percent for reactors, but 90 percent enrichment is needed for a bomb.
Tehran touted its ability to enrich uranium in February, when it produced a small batch of low-enriched uranium using a first set of 164 centrifuges at Natanz. Though no experiments to enrich more uranium had been announced since then, Tehran insists it never halted the process despite Western demands, and it defiantly bypassed an Aug. 31 deadline to do so.
"Iran more likely slowed down the development program over the summer as part of a diplomatic strategy to persuade the world that it would not be nearing nuclear weapons capability any time soon," said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Now that the Security Council is taking up a sanctions resolution, Iran has started the second cascade as a political signal to show that it does not give in to pressure."
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