Iran Is Installing 3,000 Uranium Centrifuges

"We are right now installing 3,000 centrifuges," Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian Parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, was quoted as saying by IRNA. He said the installation "stabilizes Iran's capability in the field of nuclear technology."

In Iran, not everybody is nuclear-happy: two hard-line newspapers that reflect the views of Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently demanded that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stay away from nuclear issues because they deepen Iran’s isolation.

The announcement was received by the US as a "major miscalculation" by Iran. Tehran's move follows a ban on 38 inspectors from four Western nations announced on Monday.

"If Iran takes this step, it is going to confront universal international opposition," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, quoted by AP. "If they think they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure, then they are very badly mistaken."

"I understand that they are going to announce they are going to build up their 3,000 centrifuge facility ... some time next month," IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said in Davos, Switzerland.

The media recalled that a year ago Iran promised to have 3,000 centrifuges running by now. Instead, it is just beginning to install that equipment at their Natanz facility.

"We’ll see what Dr. ElBaradei has to say," the US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Friday at a briefing in Washington. "More importantly, we’ll see what the Iranians do; they continue in provocative behavior."

In addition, any inspectors from Western countries that sponsored UN sanctions slapped on Iran last month were now barred from working in Iran, the unnamed diplomat said, reports the Gulf Daily News.

In the row over Iran's controversial nuclear programme, Russia warned the United States Saturday against additional unilateral sanctions against Tehran now that a compromise resolution has been passed by the United Nations Security Council, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow. Ivanov was scheduled to meet with his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said.

North Korea on Saturday denied cooperating with Iran in preparation for an Iranian nuclear test. A statement issued Saturday by the foreign ministry in Pyongyang said that some western media had spread such rumours "in order to mislead public opinion.

A number of Iranian parliamentarians urged former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to intervene in the nuclear dilemma, ISNA news agency reported Saturday.

"Rafsanjani is one of the main pillars of the system and has always been effective in critical junctures. For solving the nuclear dispute we need great men to enter the scene," MP Ismaeil Germai- Moqaddam told ISNA.

"Their assertion is nothing but a sheer lie and fabrication intended to tarnish the image of the DPRK by charging it with 'nuclear proliferation'," KCNA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.