Iran has reached a key target of 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday, vowing to ignore UN resolutions calling for a halt to
Tehran's sensitive nuclear work.
"We have now reached 3,000 machines," a defiant Ahmadinejad told a rally in the northeastern city of Birjand.
It was not the first time that the president had boasted that Iran had 3,000 centrifuges up and running.
"Now it has put into operation more than 3,000 centrifuges and every week we install a new series" of centrifuges, Ahmadinejad said on September 2.
The number is a key milestone because scientists say that in ideal conditions it is sufficient to produce enough enriched uranium in one year to make a single nuclear bomb.
The hardline president also said that Iran "could not care less" about
UN Security Council resolutions aimed at freezing Tehran's nuclear drive.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in August that Iran had 12 cascades of 164 centrifuges (1,968) running simultaneously to enrich uranium and that 656 others were either under construction or being tested.
The centrifuges are located at an underground nuclear facility at Natanz in central Iran.
Iran has so far defied international calls to suspend enrichment, the process which produces nuclear fuel but in highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Speaking at the rally, Ahmadinejad vowed that Iran would continue ignoring Security Council resolutions which have imposed two sets of sanctions on Tehran for its failure to heed ultimatums to suspend enrichment.
"Some people say implement the resolutions but we say the resolutions are based on a wrong report," he said.
"They should know that the Iranian nation could not care less about the sanctions," Ahmadinejad said, adding that the Iranian people "will not retreat an iota from any of their rights, especially nuclear rights."
Iran denies Western charges that it is trying to build
atomic weapons under the guise of its civilian nuclear programme, and says it wants to enrich uranium solely for civilian energy purposes.
But the United States which is spearheading international efforts to thwart Iran's atomic work has imposed a set of unilateral sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear defiance and alleged support of terrorism.
The
State Department seized on the latest announcement from Tehran as fresh evidence of Iran's defiance of the
United Nations.
Spokesman Sean McCormack said he could not confirm Iran's claim that it had 3,000 centrifuges in operation but added: "The international community demands to know what is going on now and where Iran is headed."
Washington has blacklisted Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard corps as well as major Iranian banks and successfully encouraged virtually all major European banks into cutting business with the Islamic republic.
However, Iran's status as the world's fourth oil exporter and OPEC's second largest means it can not allow itself to become detached from the world economy.
Iran and the IAEA agreed on a timetable in August for Tehran to provide answers to outstanding questions over its nuclear programme.
The IAEA has been probing Iran's programme for the past four years but has so far failed to conclude whether it is peaceful or not.
The Vienna-based nuclear watchdog is poised to publish a new report this month on Iran's cooperation in providing answers that is to serve as a key part of further talks at the UN on whether to impose a third round of sanctions.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is also due to report to major world powers before mid-November on Iran's willingness to give up uranium enrichment in exchange for political and trade incentives.
Although Washington insists it wants a diplomatic solution, it has never ruled out a military option, with President George W. Bush raising the prospect of "
nuclear holocaust" and "World War III" if Iran acquires atomic weapons. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she would urge a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis in talks with Bush this week and that any further sanctions should be agreed by Russia and China, both major energy and trade partners of Iran.
