TEHRAN, Iran, Feb 22, (Agencies): Iran said Monday it plans to build two new uranium enrichment facilities deep inside mountains to protect them from attack, a new challenge to Western powers trying to curb Tehran’s nuclear program for fear it is aimed at making weapons.
Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also Iran’s vice president, said Tehran intends to use its more advanced centrifuges at the new sites, a decision that could add to growing concerns in the West over Tehran’s program because the technology would allow Iran to accelerate the pace of its program.
The two plants are among 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities Iran approved the construction of in November, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of UN demands it halt enrichment.
“Hopefully, we may begin construction of two new enrichment sites in the next Iranian year as ordered by the president,” the semiofficial ISNA quoted Salehi as saying Monday. The Iranian calendar year begins March 21.
“As of now, our enrichment sites ... will be built inside mountains,” Salehi added, according to ISNA.
The decision appears to be aimed at shielding the facilities from potential military attack.
Israel considers Iran’s nuclear program a strategic threat, and has hinted at the possibility of airstrikes against Iran if world pressure does not halt Tehran’s nuclear efforts.
The Israelis have launched such strikes in the past. In 1981, an Israeli air attack destroyed an unfinished nuclear reactor in Iraq. Israel also hit a suspected nuclear facility in Syria in September 2007.
Iran’s enrichment of uranium is the central concern of the United States and other nations negotiating with the country over its disputed nuclear program. The technology can be used to generate fuel for power plants and isotopes for medical purposes, but it can also be used to make weapons-grade uranium for atomic bombs.
Tehran insists its enrichment work is only meant for peaceful purposes, but Washington and its allies worry the program masks efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
Tehran has already said it may install its more advanced centrifuges at its small enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, which was made public last September. The new centrifuges are more advanced than the decades-old P-1 type centrifuges in use at the country’s main enrichment facility at Natanz, in central Iran.
Centrifuges are machines used to enrich uranium — a technology that can produce fuel for power plants or materials for a nuclear weapon. Uranium enriched to a low level is used to produce fuel, but further enrichment makes it suitable for use in building nuclear arms.
The new models will be able to enrich uranium much faster than the old ones — which means Iran could amass more material in a shorter space of time that could be turned into the fissile core of missiles, should Tehran choose to do so.
Salehi said the new enrichment sites will be equal to that of Natanz in terms of production capacity but smaller in geographical size, another indication that more advanced centrifuges will be installed, requiring less space to churn out the same enriched uranium.

Sanctions
Kuwaiti Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah hopes there would not be more sanctions against Iran in order to fend off more tensions in the region.
“We wish our friends (in Iran) can do their best to reassure the international community about the Iranian nuclear program so that there would not be an excuse for imposing sanctions,” he told reports ahead of starting a tour that will take him to Portugal, Britain, Luxembourg, Belgium and Libya.
“There are wise people in Iran,” he believed.
But, he urged Tehran to fully comply with international legitimacy and IAEA requirements in a bid to stave off more tensions with the international community, which he said would bring negative impacts on the Gulf region.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should reveal the names of companies with “problematic” business dealings with Iran and sanction them, 30 lawmakers urged her in a letter released Monday.
Clinton should punish the firms under the Iran Sanctions Act, which authorizes sanctions against non-US companies that invest more than 20 million dollars in Iran’s oil and gas sectors, they said in the message.
“If firms are violating US law, there must be consequences,” the group, led by Republican Representative Mark Kirk and Democratic Representative Ron Klein, said in the message, which was dated Thursday.
“Given Iran’s intransigence and the support these companies provide to the Iranians, we urge you to fully enforce the Iran Sanctions Act and levy appropriate sanctions against companies who have violated US law,” they said.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for an immediate embargo on Iran’s energy sector, saying the UN Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move.
Iran’s uranium enrichment in defiance of several rounds of Security Council sanctions has spurred world powers to consider tougher measures to halt what the West fears is a covert nuclear weapons drive.
Iran denies any seeking to build an atomic bomb and says it only wants to uranium enrichment to generate electricity and medical isotopes.
Many analysts doubt enough pressure could be mustered to make Tehran yield. Israel has backed the talks while hinting at pre-emptive military action should it deem diplomacy a dead end.
If the world “is serious about stopping Iran, then what it needs to do is not watered-down sanctions, moderate sanctions ... but effective, biting sanctions that curtail the import and export of oil into Iran,” Netanyahu said in a speech.
“This is what is required now. It may not do the job, but nothing else will, and at least we will have known that it’s been tried. And if this cannot pass in the Security Council, then it should be done outside the Security Council, but immediately.”
Though it is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, Iran imports some 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign refineries.
Western diplomats believe that China, along with fellow veto-wielder Russia, would block any Security Council sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector. Proposed sanctions for now focus on Iranian government assets like the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would prefer the Security Council to curb Iran but believed there was enough international support outside that forum for energy sanctions.

Ban
Iran has threatened to ban airlines from using its airspace if they refer to the waterway between Iran and Arab states as the “Arabian” instead of “Persian” Gulf.
The unusual move reflects tension in the region over Iran’s dispute with the United States and its allies over its nuclear enrichment activities and the position of Arabian Peninsula states caught between ties to Washington and fear of Tehran.
Gulf Arab states share US anxiety that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Most of them offer facilities to US military forces and some have heavily purchased US weaponry in recent years.
“The airlines of the southern Persian Gulf countries flying to Iran are warned to use the term Persian Gulf on their electronic display boards,” Road and Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani said in comments in the daily Iran newspaper.
“Otherwise they will be banned from Iranian airspace for a month the first time and upon repetition their aircraft will be grounded in Iran and flight permits to Iran will be revoked,” he added.
The warning seemed directed at airlines based in the Gulf Arab countries and flying into Iran, but the newspaper report also said Iran had taken action against a foreign employee of one of its own airlines.
A Greek employee of Iranian commercial carrier Kish Air had been fired for using the term “Arabian Gulf” on a display board, and the airline had been asked to apologise over the incident.
The Saudi-based Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation said last month it had scrapped the Islamic Solidarity Games which were to be held in Iran in April because of a dispute over whether the Gulf waterway is “Arab” or “Persian”.
Designation of the key waterway for global oil and gas supplies has long been a touchy issue among the countries bordering it — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq and Iran.
Iran says it is the Persian Gulf, the Arab states say it is Arab. Foreign language descriptions can offend either party if they use one name or the other, or sometimes if they avoid an adjective altogether.

Veteran
Veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, keen to reassert his weakened influence by healing Iran’s post-election rifts, may come under fire from hardliners again when he chairs a meeting of a top clerical body this week.
In recent months followers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have criticised Rafsanjani for failing to give Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unswerving support in a struggle to crush an opposition movement galvanised by the disputed June vote.
The aftermath of the presidential election, which plunged the Islamic Republic into its worst internal crisis, is expected to be high on the agenda when the powerful Assembly of Experts meets on Tuesday.
“The spirit of dismissal, elimination, insult and slander, which amount to a fatal poison in the country, should be avoided,” Rafsanjani, 75, urged in a statement on Saturday.
The wily former president said the emphasis should be on “unity, commonalities and the guidelines of the Supreme Leader”.
The 86-member assembly, which meets twice a year, supervises, appoints and in theory can sack the Supreme Leader — a never-tested prerogative which hardliners contest.
Its two-day closed session coincides with renewed pressure by the United States and its allies for new UN sanctions to deter Tehran from pursuing nuclear work they fear is aimed at making atomic bombs, not just fuel for power plants.
Rafsanjani criticised the International Atomic Energy Agency for saying last week that it feared Iran may now be working to develop a nuclear-armed missile, describing the UN agency’s report as “heavily influenced” by Western powers.
Ali Ansari, an Iran analyst at St Andrew’s University in Scotland, said Rafsanjani might be a target for hardliners who seem set against compromise with the reformist opposition.
“If he sits secure in his position it may reflect that he remains fundamentally strong within the system, but just can’t do anything at this time, and/or that Khamenei is resisting calls to have him demoted,” Ansari said.