Iran has started loading fuel rods into an aging nuclear reactor used to make medical isotopes and is set to formally declare that an underground bunker complex for uranium enrichment is now fully operational, Iranian state media reported on Wednesday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will unveil a total of three nuclear projects on Wednesday in a ceremony in Tehran that will be shown live on state television, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The third project is a line of new carbon fiber centrifuges, which state television said have more output and enrich uranium faster than older centrifuges.

A string of volatile incidents between the two countries in the past few months has increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

The developments had been previously announced or alluded to by Iranian officials, though with less fanfare than was on display during Wednesday’s television broadcast, which featured Ahmadinejad in a white lab coat and portraits of Iran’s recently slain nuclear scientists on prominent display.

State television said each of the projects would adhere to Iran’s nuclear slogan: “nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none.”

But their unveiling will undoubtedly add to the significant build-up of tension between Iran and the U.S., Israel and many Western nations over concerns that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons.

The war of words between Iran and Israel has grown louder every day this week, the result of a bombing in New Delhi and two other incidents involving explosives in Thailand and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Israel has accused Iran in each of the incidents. Iran, in turn, denies responsibility and blames Israel for the assassinations of several scientists who have worked in Iran’s nuclear program over the years.

In a televised appearance before Wednesday’s scheduled announcement, Ahmadinejad appeared to be pressing buttons on electronic switchboards in a laboratory. A presenter said the president was initiating the loading of fuel rods into the 43-year-old, U.S.-designed Tehran research reactor.

The announcement about the underground bunker involves the Fordo enrichment site, near the central city of Qom, which Iran says has become fully operational. Iran says that it wants to secure parts of its enrichment activities at Fordo in order for its nuclear program to survive a hostile military airstrike, which Israel has openly threatened.

Israel and its Western allies charge that the moving of centrifuges to a mountain site said to be impregnable by bunker-busting bombs is a sign that Iran is trying to hide parts of its nuclear program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. watchdog that monitors all known Iranian nuclear activities, including those at the Fordo bunker site — confirmed last month that Iran had started enriching uranium there.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said in January that the cascades of centrifuges in Fordo and at Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz are enriching uranium up to 20 percent — not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but enough to power up the medical research reactor Fereydoon Abbasi.

High-ranking officials from the IAEA are scheduled to visit Iran on Tuesday for a second round of talks, possibly signaling that Iran is ready to provide more transparency on the intentions of its nuclear program. Such transparency is a key demand by the United Nations in recent resolutions against Iran.

(Source: Washington Post)