Iran Flaunts Its Nuclear Achievement

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday announced success in Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium and he demanded respect for the nation’s right to peaceful atomic energy, upping the ante in Tehran’s dispute with the West about its nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials said the country’s scientists had enriched uranium to the level needed for civilian purposes using 164 linked centrifuges and intended to increase the number of linked centrifuges to 3,000 by year’s end.

Western countries suspect that Iran’s ultimate goal is to make highly enriched uranium for an atomic bomb and have been insisting that Iran suspend its enrichment program, but with Tuesday’s announcement, it will probably be harder to persuade Tehran to stop.

Iran’s declaration is a key political achievement for the country as well as a technological milestone. However, Tehran is probably still years away from having enough low enriched uranium for power plants or the highly enriched uranium necessary to build nuclear bombs, diplomats and nuclear analysts said. Estimates are that it could take Iran from as little as three years to as long as 10 years to build a bomb.

The Bush administration sharply criticized the Iranian announcement, saying Tehran had “chosen the pathway of defiance” in the face of United Nations demands that Iran stop uranium enrichment altogether.

“I announce that our beloved Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world,” Ahmadinejad told a formal gathering of some of the country’s top civilian and military leaders in the northeastern city of Mashhad, which he was visiting. “The nuclear fuel cycle has been completed at the laboratory level and uranium has been produced with suitable degree of enrichment for use in nuclear power plants.... This is the result of the Iranian nation’s resistance.”

His announcement, made with much fanfare, appeared designed to burnish Iran’s image as a scientifically advanced country and bolster Ahmadinejad’s standing at home.

Hamid Reza Taraghi, a senior aide to Ahmadinejad, said Iran no longer needed to negotiate and was handing Western powers and the International Atomic Energy Agency a fait accompli.

“I believe there is no longer any need for negotiations. All we need to discuss with [IAEA chief Mohamed] ElBaradei is to ensure continued cooperation of the IAEA in its observer capacity to confirm that our activities are peaceful in the purposes,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Marking the occasion was a joyful religious performance, rare in a country accustomed to more somber rites: A group of men wearing ethnic clothing danced to upbeat chants of “God is great!” They waved a small box containing a sample of uranium yellowcake, treated uranium ore used in the production of uranium hexafluoride gas that in turn is spun into enriched uranium, and presented it to the museum of the shrine of the eighth Shiite imam in Mashhad, a pilgrimage city.

“We will continue our path until we achieve production of industrial-scale enrichment,” Ahmadinejad said, adding that the West must respect Iran’s right to atomic technology.

Thousands of centrifuges, operating in cascades, are needed for large-scale production. Uranium gas enriched to a low level can be used to generate electricity. If technological adjustments are made and the gas is further processed, the result is highly enriched uranium, which can be used in a bomb.

There was no independent verification of Iran’s announcement, but it is widely believed to be true in the nuclear community. Inspectors for the IAEA who have been at the enrichment site in Natanz and elsewhere in Iran for the last several days will report directly to ElBaradei when he arrives in Tehran on Thursday, IAEA officials said.

The IAEA reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council in February, and at the end of March the council asked ElBaradei to report back in 30 days on Iran’s compliance with demands that it cease all uranium enrichment and allow a stiffer inspection regime. With Tuesday’s announcement, Tehran clearly flouted the council demand that it cease enrichment activity.

Experts cautioned that the Iranian announcement was no proof that Tehran had any intention of building an atomic weapon. In any case, to make enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, a cascade of 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges would have to be operated for at least a year.

Operating a centrifuge cascade briefly to make a few grams of low enriched uranium is much easier than keeping a delicate and far larger centrifuge cascade operating properly for weeks or months. Iran began enrichment Monday, said the head of Iran’s civilian Atomic Energy Organization.

“This shouldn’t be seen as a shock, they’ve been steadily progressing towards this,” said a senior official in Vienna close to the IAEA. “It should be depicted with caveats: If they’ve enriched for five minutes it’s one thing, if you have major enrichment it’s another. But certainly it’s a technical milestone.”

Gary Samore, a nuclear nonproliferation advisor to President Clinton, noted that Iran had yet to operate a cascade of 1,000 centrifuges or more -- the type needed to make a significant quantity of enriched uranium. But Tuesday’s announcement indicated that it could be well on its way.

“Iran has now passed the next hurdle: running a production module [of 164 centrifuges]. So if they feel they can do this without problems then they can start building new modules of 164 centrifuges each ... and the argument is that ... they could then build a similar set of cascades secretly,” Samore said.

Although Iran has said repeatedly that it does not want to make a nuclear bomb, Western diplomats suspect the country may be planning or already have a clandestine program in addition to the one at Natanz in central Iran. It is easy to hide centrifuge facilities, which are relatively small and which leave little or no trace if they are underground, Samore said.

Nuclear inspectors have found rough drawings showing how to form uranium into hemispheres that can be fitted to missiles and indications that Iran’s Defense Ministry may be involved in some of the country’s nuclear work.

In IAEA reports, ElBaradei has said he is unable to rule out that Iran has a hidden nuclear program.

Even the limited enrichment capability made public Tuesday widens Iran’s choices in dealing with the United Nations and the West, making it far harder for the European Union and the United States to insist on a complete cessation of all of Iran’s enrichment activities, diplomats and experts said.

“It is always easier to get a freeze than a rollback,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who used to handle nonproliferation issues for the U.S. State Department.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran would not give in to bullying by nations that he said sought to deprive Iran of its rights.

“I call on our scientists to speed up their efforts until we have enough fuel for all our nuclear power plants,” he said. At the moment Iran does not have any nuclear power plants, but at least two are under construction.

The announcement also emboldened Iranian hard-liners.

“The news would render the next meeting of the U.N. Security Council meaningless,” said one hard-line news website anticipating Ahmadinejad’s comments.

Iran now may feel it is impervious to international pressure and refuse to make a deal with the Security Council.

“In the worst scenario this reduces every time window for negotiations” and brings the world closer to a military option, meaning that the United States might try to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a European diplomat said.

Samore and others, however, believe Iran eventually will negotiate with the Security Council and may agree to a new, tougher inspection regime by the IAEA, and answer questions posed by its nuclear inspectors. At the same time, they predicted that Iran would not stop uranium enrichment, at most agreeing to a freeze at its current level of 164 centrifuges.

Diplomats for European and Middle Eastern countries agreed that a freeze might be the best option. The U.S. and EU position is still to demand a complete cessation of enrichment activities.

“If Iran wants to show to the world that they are in a peaceful program, they stop here and start negotiations under these new conditions,” the European diplomat said.

Middle Eastern diplomats noted that in the last few months Iran had shown the Iranian public that it was strong. Tehran has withstood the international pressure of being reported to the U.N. Security Council. It has gained military prowess, which it demonstrated by putting on war games in the Persian Gulf last week, and also demonstrated it is a serious international player, having been invited by the United States to discussions on how to stabilize Iraq. Now, it has also enriched uranium, which is something that only a few technologically advanced countries have done.

“It seems the Iranian leadership has proved a lot to its constituency.... If they are strong internally they can make concessions,” a Middle Eastern diplomat said.

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Times staff writer Rubin reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Naji from Tehran. Times staff writers Kim Murphy in Moscow and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.