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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president claimed Sunday that his country is now running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its nuclear program—a long-sought Iranian goal that could add momentum to efforts to impose new U.N. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The claim appeared at odds with a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Thursday that put the number much lower—at close to 2,000. The International Atomic Energy Agency said enrichment had slowed and Iran was cooperating with its nuclear probe, which could fend off calls for a third round of sanctions.

"The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in remarks carried by the state television Web site.

Iran previously announced operating 3,000 centrifuges in April, but the IAEA said at the time that Iran had only 328 centrifuges going at its underground Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.

In the latest report, drawn up by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the organization put the number of centrifuges enriching uranium in Natanz at close to 2,000 with another 650 being tested.

The 2,000 figure is an increase of a few hundred of the machines over May, when the IAEA last reported on Iran. Still, the rate of expansion is much slower than a few months ago, when the country was assembling close to 200 centrifuges every two weeks.

"The recent report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agrees with Iran's approach and the dispute over Iran's nuclear case has ended," Ahmadinejad said. The IAEA report noted an increased willingness by the Iranians to answer questions after years of stonewalling and was seen as putting the brakes on the push for a new sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council has so far passed two sets of sanctions targeting Iranian individuals and businesses involved in the country's nuclear and missile programs. The resolutions also ordered countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology for these programs.

U.N. officials have suggested that Iran had slowed its program and increased its cooperation with the agency investigators to avert the new sanctions.

The report said that Iran continued to produce only negligible amounts of nuclear fuel with its centrifuges, far below the level usable for nuclear warheads.

The president's announcements appeared to mark a shift away from that strategy.

Iran's ultimate stated goal for the Natanz facility, the only site now open to full IAEA monitoring, is to run 54,000 centrifuges—enough for dozens of nuclear weapons a year.

Uranium gas, spun in linked centrifuges, can result in either low- enriched fuel suitable to generate power, or the weapons-grade material that forms the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

The U.S. claims Iran is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons. But Iran insists it wants to master the technology only to meet future power needs and argues it is entitled to enrich under a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty provision giving all pact members the right to develop peaceful programs.

You raise an interesting option, but have you considered the fact that the last time anyone went hunting for weapons-grade uranium, plutonium, or anything else of that nature, they came up empty?

A call for military action in this area based in false pretenses could be politically catastophic, particularly since there has been nothing solidly proving that they've been enriching weapons-grade uranium.

Given that they have the hardware to enrich it for either process, and that all they would need to do is switch over the operations for high-grade fissile material, and then use it in either "dirty" bombs (an explosive device designed to disperse mass quantities of nuclear contamination into the atmosphere) or in a well-constructed, high-yield device is a no-win situation.

The radical parties in power in the middle east have no qualms about the repercussions of their actions, and the first serious strategic use of a nuclear weapon since World War 2 would only end in what is commonly known as a mutually assured destruction (or MAD, for short) scenario.

One must take into account the fact that these radical groups have proven, time and time again, that they DO NOT CARE if they mnage to rack up a civilian kill count, as it serves to cow the remaining population into subission to their whims.

Think about it, would you not fear the potential actions of a group that sees civilian colatteral damage as acceptable, if not completely inconsequential in a military situation not to use such force to make an example of a problem area if it thought it needed to?