http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-activates-nuclear-reactor-says-underground-bunker-is-fully-operational/2012/02/15/gIQAHN2WFR_story.html
TEHRAN — In a new show of defiance against tightened sanctions, Iran on Wednesday threatened to cut oil exports to several European Union countries and unveiled advances in its nuclear fuel programs.
In a day of fiery speeches, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also lashed out at the West, condemning the recent assassinations of Iranian scientists.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of six E.U. states and warned at least four of them — Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece — that they must extend their long term oil-purchasing contracts with Iran or face a cutoff, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Wednesday.
France and the Netherlands, close U.S. allies in supporting international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, were told that they would no longer receive any oil at all, the agency reported.
Earlier, the official Press TV said Iran would stop exporting oil to all six countries. The announcement helped drive the price of crude to nearly $102 a barrel Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Europe accounts for about 18 percent of Iran’s crude exports, with Greece, Italy and Spain among the main buyers, AP said.
Iran’s Oil Ministry subsequently denied the Press TV report. Another Iranian media outlet, Fars News Agency, quoted an Oil Ministry source as saying that the exports to Europe have not been stopped yet but that Iran has given an ultimatum to those countries to continue their long-term contracts. Iran’s Arabic -language state television channel al-Alam said the ministry would provide more details Thursday.
Iran’s move was aimed at preempting a European Union boycott of Iranian oil, which is scheduled to start in July.
The threatened cutoff was announced after state media reported that Iran has started loading fuel rods into the Tehran Research Reactor, an aging U.S.-supplied nuclear reactor used to make medical isotopes, and has begun operating a new generation of centrifuges at the country’s main uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz. While official media had reported that Ahmadinejad would also formally declare fully operational the underground Fordow uranium-enrichment facility, he did not mention the complex in his speech.
In Washington, the State Department played down the nuclear accomplishments, describing them as “hyped” and “not terribly impressive.” She added that Iran remains “many, many months behind” its own schedule.
“Iran is clearly feeling the pressure of its international and diplomatic isolation,” department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
She said the United States is evaluating a letter that Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, has sent to Catherine Ashton, the E.U. foreign policy chief, regarding a return to talks with world powers on Tehran’s nuclear program. “It may be that they felt the need to bluster on their nuclear side even as they make clear that they do want to come back to the table for talks,” Nuland said.
Briefing reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Wisconsin, White House spokesman Jay Carney noted that the Tehran Research Reactor remains under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and that “the United States has never objected to Iran’s peaceful and civilian nuclear activities.”
Carney said Iran’s “provocative” and “defiant” acts and statements were “designed to distract attention from the demonstrated impact that the sanctions are having.”
Ahmadinejad unveiled the nuclear projects Wednesday in a Tehran ceremony broadcast live on state television. They include a line of new carbon fiber centrifuges, which state television said have more output and enrich uranium faster than older centrifuges.The developments had been previously announced or alluded to by Iranian officials, though with less fanfare than was on display during Wednesday’s broadcast, which featured Ahmadinejad in a white lab coat and portraits of Iran’s recently slain nuclear scientists on prominent display.
State television said each of the projects would adhere to Iran’s nuclear slogan: “nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none.”
In an emotional speech during the ceremony, the mother of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a deputy head of the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility who was killed last month, asked her son’s colleagues to follow his path and continue their ground-breaking research. Portraits of her son, smiling while visiting Iranian heritage sites with his family, appeared onscreen as tears ran down the mother’s cheeks. Other scientists in the audience covered their faces with surgical masks, afraid to be recognized and fall victim to the assassination campaign.
Ahmadinejad stressed that progress requires struggle against world powers, which he asserted are much weaker than they seem. “If today any nation wants to taste dignity, progress, justice, freedom and greatness, it has to break through the imposed policies of the tyrants,” he said.
In a separate speech, Khamenei urged the nation to vote massively in the March 2 parliamentary elections. Growing dissatisfaction over rising prices and threat of war were all figments of the Western media’s imagination, he said.
“Those who were busy hallucinating with their alcoholic and plagued minds finally understood what is happening in Iran,” Khamenei said, according to his personal Web site. He urged voters to deliver “a strong blow to the enemy’s mouth.”
The unveiling of the nuclear achievements appeared likely to add to mounting tensions between Iran and the United States, Israel and many Western nations over concerns that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons.
The war of words between Iran and Israel has grown louder every day this week, the result of a bombing in New Delhi and two other incidents involving explosives in Thailand and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Israel has accused Iran in each of the incidents. Iran, in turn, denies responsibility and blames Israel for the assassinations of several scientists who have worked in Iran’s nuclear program over the years.
In a televised appearance before Wednesday’s announcement, Ahmadinejad appeared to be pressing buttons on electronic switchboards in a laboratory. A presenter said the president was initiating the loading of fuel rods into the 43-year-old, U.S.-designed Tehran research reactor.
The announcement about the underground bunker involves the Fordow enrichment site, near the central city of Qom, which Iran says has become fully operational. Iran says that it wants to secure parts of its enrichment activities at Fordow so that its nuclear program cansurvive a military airstrike, which Israel has openly threatened.
Israel and its Western allies charge that the moving of centrifuges to a mountain site said to be impregnable by bunker-busting bombs is a sign that Iran is trying to hide parts of its nuclear program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. watchdog that monitors all known Iranian nuclear activities, including those at the Fordow bunker site — confirmed last month that Iran had started enriching uranium there.
The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoun Abbasi, said in January that the cascades of centrifuges in Fordow and at Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz are enriching uranium up to 20 percent — not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but enough to power up the medical research reactor.
High-ranking officials from the IAEA are scheduled to visit Iran on Tuesday for a second round of talks, possibly signaling that Iran is ready to provide more transparency on the intentions of its nuclear program. Such transparency is a key demand by the United Nations in recent resolutions against Iran.
In his speech Wednesday, Ahmadinejad also said that Iran now has 9,000 centrifuges spinning. If true, that would be nearly double last year’s number.
“Approximately 6,000 centrifuges were working and 3,000 have been added to that number,” he said.
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