TEHRAN — Iran has significantly boosted its supply and output of reactor-grade nuclear material, according to a quarterly report issued Friday by the United Nations' arms control division.
Meanwhile, in Syria, international inspectors reported finding unexplained particles of modified uranium at a lab in Damascus, far from an alleged nuclear site.
The inspectors said they discovered the artificially modified uranium particles in samples taken last year from a facility in the Syrian capital called the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor. The report disclosed few other details about the discovery or Syria's response to the agency's request for an explanation.
The uranium particles found at the facility "are of a type not included in Syria's declared inventory of nuclear material," the report says.
The reports by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, came a day after President Obama, during his visit to Cairo, called on Iran and other nations to avoid a Middle East nuclear arms race and strive for a world without atomic weapons.
The U.S. and its Western allies allege that Iran is violating the spirit of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by using a civilian nuclear energy program as a cover for developing the means to produce atomic weapons, a charge Iranian leaders deny.
Iran's nuclear research program has also become a domestic campaign issue ahead of next Friday's presidential elections here. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has touted the program as a point of national pride, even adding the symbol of the atom to his campaign posters, while his challengers say he has isolated Iran with his tough talk and uncompromising stance.
Arms control experts say the IAEA report on Iran suggests that Tehran continues to master the enrichment process without running into any major glitches.
"Iran's nuclear program comes across to me as if Iran has its head down and burrowing forward," said Jacqueline Shire, an arms control expert at the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank. "It's not stopping. It's not looking up. It's not taking the temperature of the political situation. They're just bearing ahead."
The dryly worded reports, delivered to the governing board of the agency and obtained by The Times, say Iran has increased its supply of low-enriched uranium during the last three months by 30%, to nearly 3,000 pounds, and is now feeding uranium gas into about 5,000 high-speed centrifuges, up 25% since February, the time of the last report. It also has an additional 2,000 centrifuges spinning in preparation for being fed uranium gas to turn into nuclear material.
