We will meet our own nuclear needs says defiant Iranian leader

Published on Thursday 16 February 2012 02:08

Iran has claimed two major advances in its programme to master production of nuclear fuel, a defiant response to increasingly tough western sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Yesterday, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad oversaw the insertion of the first Iranian domestically-made fuel rod into a research reactor in northern Tehran, the country’s official IRNA news agency reported.

“I hope we reach the point where we will be able to meet all our nuclear needs inside the country so we won’t need to reach out to others, specifically to the world’s dastardly people,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.

In a gesture underlining the tone of defiance, state TV showed the teenage son of slain nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari removing a curtain from the fuel container and cutting the ribbon.

Separately, the Fars agency reported that a “new generation of Iranian centrifuges” had started operation at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in central Iran.

State TV showed the father of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, killed in January, clicking on the computer to inaugurate the advanced centrifuges, as the scientist’s mother and widow stood by with tears in their eyes.

The moves were aimed at showing that Iran is mastering the entire cycle of producing nuclear fuel on its own despite the restrictions of sanctions that have hampered its ability to procure materials from abroad.

The possibility that Iran was expanding its enrichment capacity was a greater concern as regards nuclear weapons than the production of fuel rods.

Shannon Kile, a weapons researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said from a technical perspective the announcements may be “less than meets the eye”, but were likely to be popular with the Iranian public. “Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy programme has a lot of support across the political spectrum,” he said.