Iran appears to have overstated the expansion of its uranium enrichment programme at a sensitive juncture in talks with world powers, a diplomat close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday.
He said the International Atomic Energy Agency checked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement on Saturday that Iran had more than 5,000 centrifuges running and could verify just 4,000 were installed, 3,500 of which were regularly enriching uranium.
“This is the latest, verified information the agency has, as of today,” said the Vienna-based diplomat, who is familiar with the U.N. watchdog’s inspections in Iran.
These figures were only marginally higher than those given in the IAEA’s last monitoring report on Iran two months ago.
