TEHRAN — Iran's efforts to trumpet its nuclear program are cementing the country's confrontation with the West regardless of whether its claims this week of technological progress are true, several analysts said Tuesday.
The head of Iran's atomic energy program on Tuesday reiterated Tehran's long-held claim that it eventually will install 50,000 centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, at its facility in Natanz. That many centrifuges operating at full capacity theoretically could produce nuclear material for 15 atomic bombs a year.
"When we say we have entered industrial-scale enrichment, [it means] there is no way back," said Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "Installation of centrifuges will continue steadily to reach a stage where all the 50,000 centrifuges are launched."
On Monday, Iran announced that it was using them to purify gaseous uranium on an "industrial level." An official confirmed that Iran had 3,000 centrifuges in place at Natanz.
Though some Western experts raised doubts about the claim, others worried that Iran's diplomatic hardball and showy defiance of the U.S. and its allies were girding both camps for conflict and steering the country toward a further escalation.
"I am concerned that exaggerated statements of Iran's progress will make it more difficult for pragmatists in the Iranian leadership to promote a compromise solution," said Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert who runs the blog armscontrolwonk.com.
"They're rushing to establish facts on the ground that make it much [more] difficult for anyone to walk back the program," said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington.
Two officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, arrived in Iran on Tuesday to conduct a routine inspection of the Natanz enrichment facility, Iranian news agencies said.
Iranian officials say they want to produce nuclear material to power civilian reactors. U.S. and European leaders and nuclear experts suspect Iran is exploiting loopholes in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to develop nuclear weapons, or at least the ability to produce them.
Most Western experts and officials say Iran's nuclear rhetoric far exceeds its capability, suggesting that it has no more than 1,000 centrifuges in operation.
