Associated Press
VIENNA — Iran’s president declared Wednesday that his country will enrich uranium to a much higher level — a fresh rejection of an international plan to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
Experts said that could put Tehran on the road to making the material needed to arm a warhead within months.
“I declare here that with the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent fuel and anything it needs itself,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd in the central city of Isfahan.
Iran denies any interest in developing nuclear arms, and Ahmadinejad’s speech made no suggestion it was planning to turn its enriched uranium stockpile into material that could be used in nuclear warheads.
Ahmadinejad said Tehran was ready to further enrich some of its present stockpile — now at 3.5 percent — to 20 percent, the grade needed to create fuel for a small medical research reactor in the Iranian capital.
Uranium enriched at low levels can be used as fuel for nuclear energy, but when enriched to 90 percent and above, it can be used as material for a weapon. The U.S. and five other world powers have been trying to win Iran’s acceptance of a deal under which Tehran would ship most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile abroad to be processed into fuel rods for use in the research reactor.
That would leave Iran without enough enriched uranium to produce a bomb. However, after signaling in October that it would accept the proposal, Iran has since balked, presenting counterproposals that would keep the stockpile in Iran.
On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad went a step further, vowing Iran would enrich the uranium needed for the research reactor itself. “We told them, ‘Give us the 20 percent fuel’ needed for the research reactor in an exchange, the Iranian leader said in Isfahan. “But then they started adding conditions.”
“So we said, ‘If you want to give us the fuel, we’ll take it. If not, then fine and goodbye.”’
David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which has tracked Iran for signs of covert proliferation, said the process of moving from low-enriched to 20 percent enriched uranium would take months, but the next stage — enriching to weapons grade — would require only an additional “couple of weeks.”
