[Al Arabiya Latest] President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted Iran was now a nuclear nation as he announced on Thursday the production of its first highly enriched uranium on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution."One day they said we cannot enrich uranium, but with the resistance of our leader, nation ... and with the help of God, the Iranian nation has become nuclear," Ahmadinejad said.
"They (Americans) want to dominate our region but the Iranian people will never let them do that," he said in a speech at Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square before a crowd of hundreds of thousands.
"The head of the atomic energy organization (Ali Akbar Salehi) said the first stock of 20 percent fuel was produced and delivered to scientists," he added.
Iran had previously enriched uranium to just 3.5 percent but has started enriching it to the higher level required for a Tehran medical research reactor after snubbing a U.N.-drafted plan for the nuclear fuel to be supplied by France and Russia.
Its defiance has drawn Western warnings of new U.N. sanctions.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed an asset freeze on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander and four subsidiaries of a construction firm owned or controlled by the elite force.