Iran claimed today to have stockpiled 100kg of enriched uranium, enough in theory to create two nuclear bombs of the kind that destroyed Hiroshima. The news will once again stoke fears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.Iran would need 50kg of weapons-grade uranium in order to make one nuclear weapon equal in power to the one dropped by the Americans in 1945. So far, the regimeÂ’s uranium has only been enriched to the level needed for generating electricity in civilian nuclear power stations.
But if Iran chooses to enrich it to 84 per cent purity, it would reach weapons-grade level and become the essential material for building a bomb.
Mustapha Pourmohammedi, Iran's interior minister, told the official news agency that the moment of maximum international pressure on his country had passed and that Teheran would press ahead with its nuclear programme. "When the world saw that the nation is pursuing this goal with unity, the world has surrendered. We have passed the dangerous moment," he said.
By storing such a high quantity of low-enriched uranium, President Ahmadinejad's regime is widening its options. It could choose to enrich the stockpiled uranium to weapons-grade level in a matter of months – perhaps after formally withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and breaking out of all international safeguards.
Iran claims that its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful and designed to do nothing more than generate electricity for its growing population of 70 million. But western governments disbelieve this assertion.
Iran is defying three United Nations resolutions with its nuclear programme. In spite of international pressure to halt the programme it announced in April that it had started enriching uranium on an "industrial scale". Iran's official target is to bring 3,000 [centrifuges] into action – enough to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for one bomb in about a year.