Iran deals defiant blow to US and EU pressure

Iran announced new strides in its nuclear programme yesterday in a defiant blow to US and EU pressure to rein in its atomic activities, and amid signs of an increasingly vicious covert war with Israel over the issue.

Iran welcomes the readiness of the P5+1 group to return to negotiations

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled on state TV what was described as Iran’s first domestically produced, 20 per cent enriched nuclear fuel for Tehran’s research reactor.

He said 3,000 more centrifuges had been added to his country’s uranium enrichment effort, and officials said new-generation, high-capacity centrifuges had been installed in Iran’s Natanz facility. And he ordered Iran to “go build” four more nuclear research reactors.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani also said that uranium exploration in Iran had been stepped up and a new yellowcake processing factory would be “pre-launched” sometime over the next 13 months.

The developments underlined Tehran’s determination to forge ahead with nuclear activities despite tough sanctions from the West – and despite speculation that Israel or the United States could be months from launching military strikes against Iran.

Iran portrayed the advances as evidence it was only interested in peaceful nuclear goals, under the slogan “nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none”.

But the steps challenged four sets of UN sanctions and a raft of unilateral US and EU sanctions designed to halt a programme much of the West fears masks a drive for atomic weapons.

Israel – the Middle East’s sole but undeclared nuclear power which feels its existence is threatened by a nuclear Iran – is widely held to have been carrying out clandestine acts against its arch foe.

Those acts have included the murder of four Iranian scientists by unidentified motorbike assailants in the past two years and the deployment of a highly sophisticated computer virus, Stuxnet, which damaged many of Iran’s centrifuges.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in those acts.

Iran has repeatedly said it is ready to resume talks with world powers that collapsed a year ago.

Yesterday, it finally replied to a letter sent nearly four months ago by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton proposing a return to the talks.

“Iran welcomes the readiness of the P5+1 group to return to negotiations in order to take fundamental steps toward further cooperation,” chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili wrote in the letter, according to the official Irna news agency.

Lady Ashton’s spokeswoman confirmed the letter had been received and that EU officials were “carefully studying” it and consulting with the powers concerned.