Iran Says It Has Produced a Nuclear Fuel Rod

TEHRAN (AP) — Iranian scientists have produced their first nuclear fuel rod, Iran’s nuclear agency said Sunday, another step despite United Nations sanctions and measures by the United States and others to stop the nation’s atomic work and shut down any possible pathways to weapons production.
Iran has long said it is forced to seek a way to manufacture the fuel rods on its own, since the sanctions ban it from buying them on foreign markets. Nuclear fuel rods are tubes containing pellets of enriched uranium that provide fuel for reactors.
Iran’s atomic energy agency’s Web site said the domestically made fuel rod had already been inserted into the core of Tehran’s research nuclear reactor, but the claim could not be verified.
The United States and some of its European allies accuse Iran of using its nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying the program is for peaceful purposes only and is geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.
The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can lead to making a nuclear weapon. Separately, the United States and the European Union have imposed their own tough economic and financial penalties.
On Sunday, Iran’s Navy said that it had test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile during a drill in international waters near the strategic Strait of Hormuz — the passageway for a significant portion of the world’s oil supply. The drill, which could bring Iranian ships into proximity with United States Navy vessels in the area, drew attention after Iranian officials threatened to close the strait, cutting off oil exports, if the West imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil shipments.
But Iranian military officials later backed off from the threat, saying they had no intention of doing so now.
“We won’t disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi said Sunday, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency. “We are not after this.”