IRAN’S NUCLEAR EFFORT IN HIGH GEAR, U.N. SAYS

Iran has accelerated its program to enrich uranium and defied a United Nations Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said here Thursday.

The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran recently began installing the first of 3,000 gas centrifuges in a heavily fortified, underground chamber at its Natanz plant and that it planned to “bring them gradually into operation by May 2007.”

A facility that large, if it functions properly, could produce enough highly enriched uranium in a year to build a nuclear warhead. A senior U.N. diplomat here cautioned that the Iranian schedule was “fairly optimistic” and said that the highly sensitive linked centrifuges, called cascades, may not be operational before the fall.

The six-page report is almost certain to trigger a push by the Bush administration and its European allies for stiffer U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The intensifying confrontation now moves to London, where major powers will meet Monday to consider a range of actions against Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Berlin, said the United States was determined to “use all available channels and the Security Council” to draft a new resolution aimed at halting Tehran’s nuclear activity.

The report “shows that Iran has not changed its behavior, has not changed its views and is continuing on the path of defiance,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington.

But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters at the United Nations that sanctions were not a solution. “We should not lose sight of the goal, and the goal is not to have a resolution or to impose sanctions,” he said. “The goal is to accomplish a political outcome of this problem.”

The Security Council voted unanimously Dec. 23 to give Iran 60 days to close an aboveground test facility at Natanz, where it had begun small-scale uranium enrichment in August. The resolution also required Iran to suspend work at an underground facility at Natanz, halt construction of a nuclear reactor at Arak and freeze other nuclear activities deemed to be worrisome.

ElBaradei’s report indicated that the Iranians instead pushed the program into higher gear. The senior U.N. diplomat who discussed the report described it as showing “no progress” in resolving the IAEA’s major outstanding concerns.

“There is limited cooperation,” he said. “In my view, it’s fairly limited.”

Iran contends that it will produce uranium enriched only to the lower levels suitable for use in civilian reactors, but the international community fears an industrial-sized enrichment effort could be converted to produce weapons-grade material.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, showed no signs of compromise. Iran “will not withdraw from its nuclear stances even for one single step,” he said in the provincial town of Talesh on the Caspian Sea, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Iranian officials have told the IAEA that they ultimately hope to install 54,000 centrifuges, a facility potentially large enough to provide fissile material for 20 bombs a year. Other stages still would be necessary to cast the uranium and pack it into a successful explosive device.

IAEA inspection teams have visited Iran regularly since early 2003, returning every two weeks on average, and have installed cameras in a few locations at Natanz.

But Iranian officials have rebuffed agency requests to install more sophisticated cameras inside the subterranean centrifuge hall that can stream nonstop pictures back to Vienna, to ensure that no nuclear material is diverted. As an alternative, the IAEA seeks to launch unannounced inspections at any time at the facility, which Iran does not permit.

Officials in Tehran also failed to fully explain the source of particles of highly enriched uranium that had been detected on equipment at Natanz and at a separate physics research center, the report said. Iranian officials also refused to let IAEA representatives interview the former head of the research center.

Agency inspectors visited Iran this week and plan to return March 3.

Iran has steadily pushed forward with its nuclear program since the 20-year secret effort was publicly revealed in August 2002. But the recent work to install 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz has stoked concerns that Iran may near a “break-out” point for building a nuclear weapon in a matter of months.

During an IAEA team’s visit to the underground site Feb. 17, Iranian officials informed the group that they had installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges each and that another two cascades were in the “final stages of installation.” The Iranians said they would begin introducing uranium hexafluoride gas into the system to start enrichment by the end of the month.

Officials at IAEA headquarters in Vienna said that Iranian scientists had mastered centrifuge technology in recent months. One agency official described as “wishful thinking” reports that the centrifuges tested at Natanz were prone to breakage. He said the Iranians had run engineering tests “to the breaking point” to measure the weakness in the system. “They know how to enrich,” he added. “They know how to spin centrifuges.”

Spinning gaseous uranium in centrifuge cascades increases the amount of the isotope uranium-235, creating a mixture that can be converted to fuel for a nuclear reactor, or form the core of a nuclear weapon. Tests since August at the pilot plant at Natanz have produced tiny amounts of 4.2% enriched uranium, which is appropriate for use in civilian reactors, the IAEA report said. At least 90% enrichment is needed for nuclear weapons.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to Vienna, told reporters earlier Thursday that he was “deeply concerned ... that the Iranian government did not meet the deadline set by the Security Council.”

“I urge again that the Iranian government should fully cooperate with the Security Council” resolution as soon as possible, he said. Iran’s nuclear activities, he added, had “great implications for peace and security, as well as nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Britain’s foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said London would seek additional measures at the U.N. “which will lead to the further isolation of Iran internationally.... We remain determined to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to develop nuclear weapons.”

The Security Council’s limited sanctions targeted outside support for Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Possible new sanctions could include a travel ban on Iranian officials, economic sanctions and an expansion of the nuclear embargo to include conventional weapons.

Following the sanctions vote, Tehran notified the IAEA that it would bar 38 inspectors, mostly from countries that voted for sanctions, from visiting Iran. The IAEA can draw on more than 150 other inspectors, but the Iranian prohibition slashed the agency’s pool of Iran experts, cutting six of 15 members from the team.

Although international agreement allows countries to reject individual inspectors, IAEA officials said the culling of the Iran inspection team would hamper the agency’s ability to investigate Iran’s nuclear activities. The IAEA has asked Tehran to reconsider.

bob.drogin@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kim Murphy in London contributed to this report.

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Continued defiance

Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a United Nations Security Council order to freeze it, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

Main findings of IAEA

Karaj

The agency and Iran discussed highly enriched uranium particles found in 2006. Iran says contamination came from leaking reactor fuel assemblies taken from a research center in Tehran.

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Isfahane

During conversion started in June 2006, 110 tons of uranium were fed into the process, and 175 tons of uranium hexafluoride have been produced and remain under IAEA surveillance.

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Natanz

Since November 2006, Iran has continued to operate machines in the enrichment plant and to feed uranium hexafluoride into these machines. The IAEA asked for remote monitoring of the facilities, but Iran declined.

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Sources: The Associated Press; United Nations; International Atomic Energy Agency; GlobalSecurity.org