Work Related to Enrichment to Resume Within Days, Iran Says

Iran said Monday that it would resume activities related to uranium enrichment within days, a move the United States and the European Union have warned would lead to the case’s being brought before the U.N. Security Council.

Mohammed Saeedi, deputy chief of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told a university conference that work would resume at a plant in Isfahan to convert raw uranium into a gas, the official IRNA news agency reported. Centrifuges can enrich such gas into material for nuclear power or bombs.

Iran strongly denies U.S. accusations that it is trying to build atomic weapons and says its nuclear facilities will be used only for energy. The Security Council could impose sanctions on Iran if the case is referred there.

Saeedi also confirmed that Iran had converted 37 tons of uranium into gas before it formally suspended nuclear activity in November under international pressure.

Nuclear experts said 37 tons would produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make five crude nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations on Monday, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix urged both Iran and Israel to support a ban on nuclear enrichment across the Middle East as a possible compromise on curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Blix spoke at a news conference on the sidelines of a monthlong meeting of the signatories of the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“I think Israel is extremely interested in having Iran refrain” from resuming enrichment activities, Blix said.

Such a move would reassure Iran without affecting any existing Israeli nuclear weapons, he said. Israel neither admits nor denies having such arms, but it is estimated to have about 200 warheads.