Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium enrichment plant, a confidential UN atomic watchdog document said on Wednesday, ratcheting up its defiance of the United Nations.
The paper, obtained by Reuters, also said Tehran had started up more than 1,300 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment. Both moves flew in the face of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium over fears Tehran's professed civilian nuclear fuel programme is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs.
But diplomats treated the disclosure sceptically pending word from the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency. To that end, the document said, IAEA inspectors conducted a "design information verification" at the plant on April 15-16 and were informed that eight cascades - 1,312 centrifuges in all - were running and "some" uranium was being fed into them.