TEHRAN - Iran said on Monday that all its nuclear activities are under IAEA watch, including those at a new uranium enrichment bunker at Fordo that one Western diplomat said was already up and running.
The UN atomic agency confirmed Monday that Iran has started enriching uranium at a new site in a difficult-to-bomb mountain bunker, in a move set to further heighten tensions with the West. “The IAEA can confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent... in the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant,” International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in a statement. “All nuclear material in the facility remains under the Agency’s containment and surveillance,” the Vienna-based watchdog added. “All nuclear activities, notably uranium enrichment at Natanz and Fordo, are under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, was quoted as saying by Iran’s Arabic Al-Alam broadcaster. A Western diplomat at IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna told AFP that Fordo was already operational.
Meanwhile, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in comments broadcast on state television on Monday that Iran would not falter in the face of Western-imposed sanctions. “The firm decision of the Islamic Republic is to resist the pressures” of Western powers, Khamenei said.
“While the Iranian people have travelled the road to success and see the signs of new victories to come, the (Western) oppressor is trying to frighten the Iranian people and officials by brandishing the threat of sanctions.”
While analysts and some in Iran’s government have said the latest round of sanctions have hit Iran’s economy, the top leader dismissed claims that the strategy will block his country from pursuing its goals.
“Western officials have declared on a number of occasions that, with sanctions and pressure, they want to discourage the people and lead officials to renounce their plans, but they are mistaken and they will not achieve their objectives,” said Khamenei.