TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that his country had dramatically expanded the number of machines at its disposal producing enriched uranium, defying international demands for the country to halt the production of nuclear material.
But the hard-line leader, quoted by official and semi-official media, also appeared to suggest that Iran might be willing to stop adding more centrifuges, a condition for preliminary talks to end the diplomatic standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
Experts downplayed the significance of Ahmadinejad's statement.
"It's not just the number of centrifuges that counts," said a Western diplomat in Tehran, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's whether they're running and how well."
Still, he said, Ahmadinejad's assertion won't help resolve the standoff between Iran and the West.
Speaking to scholars in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ahmadinejad said that Iran had more than 5,000 centrifuges. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in May said Iran had about 3,500 centrifuges running. Centrifuges can produce nuclear material suitable for generating electricity, or if highly enriched, for use in an atomic bomb.
"The West wanted us to stop," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling the scholars. "We resisted, and now they want to resume negotiations."
There was confusion about the actual number Ahmadinejad cited. One Iranian news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Iran had 6,000 centrifuges working, before taking the report off its website. Another said he referred to "hundreds and thousands" of centrifuges.
In theory, 6,000 centrifuges running continuously can produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb in six months. But Iran has repeatedly asserted that it is not trying to build a nuclear weapon, which its religious leaders have declared un-Islamic. And the Islamic Republic's enrichment program has also been bedeviled by technical problems, diplomats and arms-control experts say.
Iran says its nuclear program is meant only to provide electricity. But the United States, Israel, Europe and most Western arms-control experts suspect that Iran is trying to at least attain the capability to begin producing bombs quickly if it so decides. Turning the reactor-grade uranium Iran now produces into weapons-grade material is relatively easy, experts say.
