Iran claims breakthrough
`Iran announced overnight it had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, a dramatic breakthrough in its disputed atomic drive that defies a UN Security Council demand for the work to be halted.
The announcement came just 15 days before the expiry of a Security Council deadline for Iran to freeze enrichment – a process that can be extended to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.
In a speech carried live on state television, vice president and atomic energy chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh announced that “on April 9, we successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 per cent,” the purity required for civilian reactor fuel.’
