Agence France Presse - Iran has started putting uranium feedstock gas into centrifuges, the first step in manufacturing what can be either nuclear reactor fuel or material for an atom bomb, diplomats told AFP Monday.

"Iran has put gas into centrifuges at its pilot enrichment plant in Natanz," a diplomat in Vienna said.

The diplomat said that Iran had not yet fired up the whole 164-centrifuge cascade but had "over the past two or three days" started work with some centrifuges.

Enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States and the European Union since it is the key process to making nuclear weapons.

Putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges, which distill out enriched uranium, would be a major escalation by Iran in its face-off with the West over a nuclear program which the United States charges hides secret atomic weapons development.

Iran said Monday that it would resume uranium enrichment even before the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency meets next month in Vienna to decide whether to recommend action by the UN Security Council, which has the authority to take punitive measures against Iran.

A second diplomat said that Iran was still doing "preliminary work" with centrifuges, almost certainly working on single machines rather than a whole cascade.

The diplomats' comments show however that Iran is following through with its threat to move ahead on enrichment.

Iran Focus– The supreme commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) vowed on Monday that the Islamic Republic would never give in to pressures on its nuclear program even if it meant facing sanctions.

“We will not back down from our stances even a slightest bit, therefore we must decisively stand up for our inalienable rights and must defend wisely our independent and mighty national identity”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told the state-run news agency ISNA, as he referred to the expected trip by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to Iran on February 23.

Safavi said that the United States had resorted to making accusations against Tehran’s nuclear program to divert international attention from its defeats in the region.

He said that the Islamic Republic had managed to withstand sanctions since the 1979 revolution. “Today the circumstances are better than the early days of the revolution, and such untimely resolutions will definitely not affect the [Islamic Republic]”.

He described any military attack on Iran as “idiotic”. “We will stand against them with all our strength, power, and wisdom”.

“If yesterday America and Europe brought the nuclear issue forward and today they insult [Islamic] sanctities, they should know that, unlike before, all Muslims of the world will announce their disgust and will decisively not allow them to bring forwards issues such as human rights tomorrow so that using that excuse they can threaten Iran and Muslims”.

Iran Focus – Iranian authorities are believed to have executed a long-time political prisoner, Iran Focus has learnt.

Hojjat Zamani, 30 years old, had been imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since the year 2000 for being a member of the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

A source who wished to remain anonymous informed Iran Focus that Zamani had been executed over the past few days after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against him.

Zamani reportedly endured severe torture in Evin Prison, later escaping and fleeing to Turkey. He was arrested however and turned over to agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Zamani was sent back to Iran where Amnesty International reported he was once again subjected to torture.

Reports had surfaced that in 2005, Zamani was held in the “dangerous prisoners” section of Rajai-Shahr Prison in Karaj (west of Tehran). In the winter of 2004, he and a group of other political prisoners went on a hunger strike that lasted several weeks.

He was reportedly threatened with imminent execution, as part of the pressure exerted to force him to end his hunger strike.

Zamani along with two other Mojahedin political prisoners, Jaafar Aghdami and Valiollah Feiz-Mahdavi, wrote a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on January 24, 2005, calling on him to set up a special fact-finding mission to “investigate the plight of families of political prisoners, particularly those whose loved ones were tortured or executed in mullahs’ prisons in the 1980s”.

A prison official only identified as Sheikhan reportedly threatened Zamani by saying that he would face imminent execution unless he recanted his letter and collaborated with the regime, after the smuggled letter was distributed to human rights activists outside Iran.

On Saturday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition coalition which includes the Mojahedin, issued a statement saying that Zamani had disappeared.

Zamani’s two brothers, Fallah and Khazal, were executed by the Iranian regime in earlier dates.

Reuters
Alireza Ronaghi

TEHRAN -- Iran said on Monday talks with Russia this week to discuss proposals to process nuclear fuel for Iranian reactors on Russian soil had been postponed. The proposal was put forward by Moscow to ease international concerns that Iran could enrich bomb-grade uranium.

"Talks with Russia have not been canceled, but the date should be discussed," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a weekly news conference.

Russia and Iran were scheduled to hold talks on Thursday to see if any headway could be made on the Russian proposal.

Elham said the proposal was only acceptable if it was in addition to enrichment facilities in Iran. "The government insists on enriching uranium on Iran's soil and the proposal should be adjusted based on the new circumstances," Elham said.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said Moscow remained prepared to hold talks with Iran over the proposal on February 16.

"Our proposal to meet on February 16 still stands," Kislyak told Interfax news agency.

Western countries have successfully pushed for Iran to be reported to the United Nations Security Council for failing to convince the world its atomic program was entirely peaceful.

Iran says it only wants to enrich low-grade uranium for use in nuclear power rectors and that, as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has a right to do so.

Elham repeated Iran's demand that Western countries recognize Iran's right to nuclear technology as a signatory to the NPT. "We are committed to international treaties to preserve our right," Elham said.

"But if our right was not recognized, there will be no reason to remain committed to international treaties."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Saturday that Tehran might review its membership of the NPT if it felt its enemies were using the accord to put unfair pressure on Iran.

But Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday played down Ahmadinejad's threat on the withdrawal from the NPT, saying Iran had no intention of pulling out of the treaty.

Elham said Iran would resume its uranium enrichment activities at its Natanz plant by March 6, when the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei submits his report on Iran's atomic work to the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors.

"Iran is determined to go ahead with its peaceful atomic work ... We will not wait until then (March 6)," he said.