Iran Cranks Up Uranium Facility

Iran resumed uranium conversion activities Monday at a nuclear facility in central Iran, a step that Europeans and the United States warned would prompt them to seek U.N. sanctions against Tehran.

The government has reopened a nuclear facility, despite surveillance cameras installed by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency. The U.S. and Europe have threatened to press for U.N. sanctions against Iran if it resumed such activity.

The facility near Isfahan that reopened Monday, converts raw uranium into gas, which is part of the enrichment process. It can be used for energy, or further processed to make a nuclear weapon. Work resumed there after inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog finished installing surveillance equipment there and seals on equipment were removed.

Iran had suspended work at the plant and its other nuclear facilities in November to avoid U.N. sanctions and as a gesture in negotiations with the Europeans.

The resumption escalates a confrontation between Iran and the West over its nuclear program, which the Europeans have been trying to convince the Iranians to sharply limit. But Iran on Saturday rejected European proposals for it to curtail the program in return for economic incentives.

Germany, France and the United States have said that if Iran restarts work in Isfahan, they would seek to have Tehran referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions.

The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its program aims only to produce electricity. But Iran has insisted it has the right to develop the entire fuel cycle — from raw uranium to the fuel for a reactor. Europe fears that if Iran can develop fuel on its own, it will also secretly produce material for a bomb.

The Conversion Facility, 10 miles southeast of the historical city of Isfahan, carried out an early stage of the fuel cycle, turning raw uranium, known as yellowcake, into gas, the feedstock for enrichment.

"The Uranium Conversion Facility restarted its work a few minutes ago," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Monday.

In the next stage of the process — which Iran has said it will not resume for the time being — the gas is fed in centrifuges for enrichment. Uranium enriched to a low level is used to produce nuclear fuel and further enrichment makes it suitable for use in atomic bomb.