Questions arise over Iran's abilities

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, speaks with head of Iran 's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, in Tehran, on Sunday. PHOTO: AFP

Of all the claims Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such concern among international nuclear inspectors that they plan to confront Tehran about it this week as they begin a new round of inspections.

The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that US officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a secret program -- supplied by the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan -- separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.

Then on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Tehran was "presently conducting research" on the P-2 centrifuge, which would quadruple Iran's enrichment powers. Centrifuges are machines to enrich uranium 235, which can fuel nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

Statements by Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials are always viewed with suspicion by international nuclear experts because Iran has understated nuclear activities that were later discovered and overstated its capabilities.

Analysts and US intelligence officials say they are uncertain whether Ahmadinejad's claim represents a real technical advance or political rhetoric meant to convince the world of the unstoppability of its atomic program.

European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due to arrive today in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency will press them to address the new enrichment claim as well as other questions about Iran's program, including a crude bomb design found in the country.

"This is a much better machine," a European diplomat said of the advanced centrifuge, which was a centerpiece of Pakistan's efforts to build its nuclear weapons.

The diplomat said the Iranians will have to explain whether Ahmadinejad was right, and if so, whether they recently restarted the abandoned program or have been pursuing it in secret for years.

If Iran moved beyond research and actually began building more efficient centrifuges to enrich uranium, it could force US intelligence agencies to revise their estimates of how long it would take for Iran to build an atom bomb -- an event they now put somewhere between 2010 and 2015.

Meanwhile, Iran's top nuclear official vowed yesterday that the regime would press on with its uranium enrichment work despite mounting international pressure to suspend suspect nuclear activities.

"Why should Iran suspend its research activities?" Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, asked.

"One should not follow such propositions ... which are not rational," he said.