Iranian starts nuclear works under IAEA control

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iranian and Western sources said on Monday, Jan.9 Iran had switched on a uranium enrichment plant deep inside a mountain, a momentous step that aggravates Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West.

In a separate development that will infuriate Washington, Iran also announced that it had sentenced to death an Iranian-American dual citizen it arrested last month as a spy.

The moves come at a time when new U.S. sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear program are causing real economic pain. Tehran has responded with threats to international shipping that have spooked oil markets. And a parliamentary election in two months is widening Iran's internal political divisions.

Iran has long said it would begin enrichment of uranium at the site, deep under a mountain near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom, but some Western capitals may have hoped it could be persuaded to hold off to restart diplomacy to lift sanctions.

Enrichment is the most contentious part of Iran's nuclear program. Tehran says it intends to refine uranium to 20 percent purity for use in a peaceful medical research reactor, and that it has hidden nothing from the IAEA.

"All nuclear activities, including enrichment in Natanz and Fordow, are under continuous surveillance and control and safeguards of the IAEA," Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh said.

The West says uranium of 20 percent purity is not necessary for power plants and would be a big step towards the higher purity needed for a nuclear bomb. Western officials say Iran lacks the technology to process enriched uranium into a form suitable to running a medical research reactor, Reuters reported.