Ahmadinejad: Iran has joined nuclear club

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Apr. 11 – Radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had officially joined the group of countries with nuclear capabilities commonly known as the Nuclear Club. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Apr. 11 – Radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had officially joined the group of countries with nuclear capabilities commonly known as the Nuclear Club.

“I officially announce that Iran has joined the world’s nuclear countries”, Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast on state television.

“This is the start of greater progress and achievements”, he said.

Earlier, Iran’s nuclear chief announced that Tehran had recently managed to enrich uranium to the level required to make nuclear fuel.

“We successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 percent on April 9”, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said.

Following the announcement, the director of the Education Organisation of Tehran told the state-run news agency Fars that a “national honour and pride bell” will ring in schools across the Iranian capital at 9 am on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced that Iran had began uranium enrichment, despite a call by the United Nations Security Council for it to cease all uranium enrichment activities.

“We operated the first unit which comprises of 164 centrifuges, gas was injected, and we got the industrial output”, Rafsanjani, who currently chairs the State Expediency Council (SEC), told the Kuwaiti news agency in Tehran.

The UN Security Council adopted a “Presidential Statement” unanimously on March 29 giving Iran 30 days to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities and resume its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.