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Armed clashes took place between a group of people and agent’s of Iran’s State Security Forces in the town of Iran-Shahr, south-eastern Iran, a local security official announced.A “local troublemaker” called Vahed was killed in the clashes, Brigadier General Mohammad Arab said. His comments were reported in Tuesday’s edition of the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami.General Arab said that Vahed along with three other individuals were planning to carry out a road block in the village of Kheyrabad.Iran-Shahr is situated in the restive province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan.At least 11 members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed and 31 others left injured last Wednesday when a bomb exploded next to their bus in the provincial capital of Zahedan.
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The Associated Press reported that Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday in a finding that clears the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran. "Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report. The IAEA detailed recent activities showing Tehran expanding its enrichment efforts - setting up hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall and bringing nearly 9 tons of the gaseous feedstock into the facility in preparation for enrichment. It added that Iranian officials had informed the agency that they would expand their centrifuge installations to have thousands of them ready by May. The conclusion - while widely expected - was important because it could serve as the trigger for the council to start deliberating on new sanctions meant to punish Tehran for its intransigence over its nuclear program. In the report, written by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency also said the Islamic republic continues building both a reactor that will use heavy water and a heavy water production plant - also in defiance of the Security Council. Both enriched uranium and plutonium produced by heavy water reactors can produce the fissile material used in nuclear warheads.
The six-page report also said that agency experts remain "unable ... to make further progress in its efforts to verify fully the past development of Iran's nuclear program" due to lack of Iranian cooperation. In Tehran, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammed Saeedi, said: "Iran considers the (IAEA demand for) suspension as against its rights, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and international regulations." "That's why Tehran could not have answered positively to the request by resolution 1737 of the UN Security Council for a suspension of enrichment activity," Saeedi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned ... that the Iranian government did not meet the (Wednesday) deadline set by the Security Council." "I urge again that the Iranian government should fully comply with the Security Council" as soon as possible, he told reporters in Vienna, saying Iran's nuclear activities had "great implications for peace and security, as well as nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Part of the sanctions target companies suspected of involvement in Iran's nuclear program - a measure that an Iranian dissident group said Tehran was circumventing by renaming the companies and otherwise disguising them, or setting up new ones. The National Council of Resistance in Iran said firms under sanctions that were renamed were the Farayand Technique Co. and the Pars Thrash Co. It named new companies set up to work on Iran's enrichment programs while avoiding sanctions as Tamin Tajhizat Sanayeh Hasteieh, Shakhes Behbood Sanaat and Sookht Atomi Reactorhaye Iran. All are headed by Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's atomic energy programs, and some employ others on the Security Council's list of those involved in Iran's nuclear program, said the group, the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of Iran's Islamic government. There was no independent confirmation of the information provided by the group, which the U.S. and the European Union list as a terrorist organization. But it has revealed past secret Iranian nuclear activities subsequently verified by the IAEA or governments.
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Indian officials say exports to Iran that could be used in the country's nuclear program have been banned.Trade officials said the ban would prevent anything that could be used to enrich uranium from being exported directly or indirectly to Iran. The restrictions comply with a decision taken last year by the United Nations Security Council. The Indian government's announcement was made just hours before the planned publication of a UN nuclear agency report.
