TEHRAN/RAMALLAH: Iran is operating about 4,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges and it is installing several thousand more, the state news agency IRNA quoted the deputy foreign minister as saying yesterday.
“There are nearly 4,000 centrifuges working in the Natanz enrichment facility... another 3,000 centrifuges are being installed,” IRNA quoted Alireza Sheikh Attar as saying in an interview with state television. In July, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had up to 6,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, the process at the heart of Western fears that Tehran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been probing Iran’s nuclear activities for several years, said in May that Tehran was operating 3,500 centrifuges in Natanz, a huge underground complex in central Iran.
Iran is under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to freeze enrichment and risks further sanctions for failing to give a clear response to an incentives package offered by six world powers in return for a halt to the sensitive work.
Israel targets Iran
Meanwhile, it is learned that the Israeli government decided in top-level strategic discussions three months ago to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from having nuclear bombs, the Hebrew daily Maariv reported yesterday.
Maariv said that Israel “has put preparations for a separate, independent military strike by Tel Aviv in high gear whether the United States and Western countries will succeed in toppling the regime diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether an American strike on Iran will eventually be decided upon.”
The report added that during the highest-level discussions, “the debate between those who believe in doing everything, including a military operation, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, and those who think we can live with Iranian nukes, has been settled.”
According to the report, Israel has not received American authorization to use US-controlled Iraqi airspace, nor has the defense establishment been successful in securing the purchase of advanced US-made warplanes which could facilitate an Israeli strike.
The report added that the Americans have offered Israel permission to use a global early warning radar system, implying that the US is pushing Israel to settle for defensive measures only.
Because of Israel’s lack of strategic depth, Israeli authorities has consistently warned over the past years it will not settle for a ‘wait and see’ approach and retaliate in case of attack, but rather use pre-emption to prevent any risk of being hit in the first place.
— With input from M. Mar’i
