TEHRAN, Iran, Aug 16, (Agencies): Iran said Monday it has decided where to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites inside protected mountain strongholds and will start construction on the first in March, defying international efforts to curb its nuclear program.
Enriching uranium creates fuel for nuclear power plants but can also, if taken to higher levels, produce the material for weapons and Iran’s growing capacity in this process is at the center of its dispute with the international community.

The UN Security Council has already passed four sets of sanctions against Iran to try and force it to stop enriching uranium.
Last year, Iran flouted international concerns by claiming it would build 10 new enrichment plants and Monday’s announcement revealed that the sites had been chosen and would be inside mountains, without revealing any other details.

“Construction of a new uranium enrichment site will begin by the end of the (Iranian) year (March) or early next year,” Salehi said. “The new enrichment facilities will be built inside mountains.”
Revelations a year ago of a previously undisclosed enrichment facility in a secret mountain base near the city of Qom inflamed international suspicions over Iran’s nuclear program and helped spur a fourth set of international sanctions in June.
The US and its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran has denied the accusation, saying its nuclear program is geared merely toward generating electricity.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field said that Salehi’s announcement was a cause for concern. “The reports that we have seen this morning certainly do not give us any comfort that Iran is moving in the right direction,” Field told reporters.
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Christine Fages, meanwhile, said the announcement “only intensifies the deep worries of the international community about the Iranian nuclear program.”
“We want Iran to respect its international obligations by suspending all its activities of uranium enrichment,” she said.

Iran is to start building its third uranium enrichment plant in early 2011, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a new law Monday binding Tehran to pursue the controversial work of refining uranium to 20 percent.
The law, Safeguarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Peaceful Nuclear Achievements, had been passed by lawmakers last month and it also stipulates that Tehran limit its cooperation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog, state news agency IRNA reported.

Satellite
The launch of a new Iranian satellite, which was to take place later this month, has been delayed as the device is still being developed, Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour said.
The minister had announced in July that the satellite, Rasad 1 (Observation), which would be Iran’s second home-built satellite to be sent into space, would be launched in the last week of August.
But Taghipour was cited late Sunday by state television’s website as saying that the satellite, to be used for transmitting images and weather forecasts, will now be launched in the second half of the current Iranian year to March 2011.
“The launch of Rasad 1 satellite will take place in the second half of this year,” Taghipour said.
The second half of the Iranian year begins on Sept 23.
“The satellite... is itself being developed, although some other stages (involved in the launch) are ready,” he added.

Taghipour did not specify when the launch would take place but said its timing would be decided “accurately once the pre-launch testing, which is a lengthy process, is done.”
The minister had previously said that within the current Iranian year a number of new satellites capable of transmitting data and images would be launched by the Islamic republic.
Iran in February revealed details of three other new satellite prototypes — the Toloo (Dawn), Navid (Good News) and telecommunications satellite Mesbah-2 (Lantern).

Sanctions
Iran is not having any problems procuring gasoline, a top official said on Monday, despite sanctions by the United States and European Union targetting refined petroleum imports.
“The adoption of sanctions have not created any obstacles for the country in procuring gasoline,” Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran’s envoy to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), told Mehr news agency.

The US and EU sanctions imposed on Iran for pursuing sensitive nuclear work specifically target the energy sector, especially US measures to choke off imports of refined petroleum products like gasoline and jet fuel.

Despite being OPEC’s second largest oil exporter, Iran depends heavily on gasoline imports due to limited refining capacity of its own.
Iran imports nearly one-third of its annual gasoline needs.
To combat sanctions, Iranian officials have been advocating consumption cuts on gasoline and building new refineries.

Last month, Deputy Oil Minister Alireza Zeighami said Iran was investing $26 billion on new refineries by the end of the current development plan to 2014.
Meanwhile, David Velasquez Caraballo, the Venezuelan envoy to Tehran, said his country “would provide the required gasoline” to Iran as and when it demands, Fars news agency reported.
Ties between Iran and Venezuela have flourished under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Caracas publicly backing Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
In September 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared on a visit to Iran that his country would supply Tehran with 20,000 barrels of gasoline a day from October in a deal worth $800 million.
Iran is also under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for its defiant pursuit of a nuclear programme which world powers suspect is masking a weapons drive.
Tehran insists its atomic work has no military aims.

Shipping
All governments should step up their vigilance against dealings with Iran’s shipping sector, a senior US official said on Monday, describing it as a “critical lifeline for Iran’s proliferation and evasion.”
Writing in the Financial Times, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said Iranian tactics to evade sanctions included repainting or renaming ships, falsifying shipping documents and assigning vessel ownership to front companies outside Iran.
In its latest move to counter this, on Friday Washington designated for sanctions three Malta-based shipping companies owned directly or indirectly by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), the national carrier, he said.
“We must redouble our vigilance over both their (Iran’s) domestic shipping lines, and attempts to use third-country shippers and freight forwarders for illicit cargo,” Levey wrote in a guest column.
The UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran in June over a nuclear programme the West suspects is aimed at developing atomic weapons, though Iran says its goals are peaceful.
The United States and the European Union have also imposed sanctions of their own on the Islamic Republic.

The sanctions blacklist dozens of Iranian military, industrial and shipping companies, tighten an arms embargo and provide for inspections of suspect cargoes to and from Iran.
“US companies involved in third-country trade — as well as foreign shippers and freight forwarders doing business with the US — must be aware of their sanctions responsibilities,” Levey wrote.
“All shippers, wherever they do business, should exercise enhanced vigilance, particularly where shipments may involve Iran.”

Levey urged businesses as well as governments to put sanctions into practice. “The broader private sector is restricting business with Iran, rather than risk facilitating Iran’s illicit activities,” he wrote.
“But while private business actions are critical for sanctions to work, it is essential that governments throughout the world now ensure that new sanctions are also translated into action.”

Charges
Barclays Bank Plc has agreed to pay nearly $300 million to settle criminal charges that it violated US sanctions in dealings with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar, according to US court documents filed on Monday.
The London-based bank was charged with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act in its dealings that involved $500 million from 1995 until September 2006, according to the documents.
The Barclays case marked the latest in a series brought by US prosecutors in recent months against major banks.
In December, prosecutors detailed a decades-long scheme by Credit Suisse Group AG to hide thousands of transactions on behalf of clients in Iran, Sudan, Libya and other nations. The Swiss bank agreed to pay $538 million.
In March, US authorities said Wachovia Bank, now a unit of Wells Fargo & Co, agreed to pay $160 million to settle US charges that it failed to stop more than $100 million of Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers’ money being laundered through accounts at the bank.
Barclays has agreed to pay $149 million to the US government and a separate $149 million in a deferred prosecution agreement with the district attorney in New York, according to the documents.
A man convicted of violating the Iran trade embargo after his family sent him millions of dollars is to be sentenced by a federal judge in New York.
Mahmoud Reza Banki is expected to learn his fate Monday from Judge John Keenan in Manhattan. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
Banki was convicted in June of violating the embargo and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
The 34-year-old Banki was born in Tehran and is a US citizen. He holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from elite Princeton University.
His lawyers had said he had $3.4 million deposited into his bank accounts by family members and was unaware that an informal banking system let an equal amount of money move into Iran.