**Germany has warned Iran it faces new UN sanctions after Tehran announced plans for 10 uranium enrichment sites in defiance of international demands.**Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose country is involved in talks on the dispute, said Iran must know the world’s patience was “not endless”.
Iran, he said, must fulfil its international commitments.
Western powers say Tehran is trying to develop nuclear arms while Iran says it needs nuclear energy for its economy.
The head of Iran’s nuclear programme, Ali Akbar Salehi, accused the West of provoking his country into launching the plan to build 10 new plants.
“It is clear that if Iran rejects the outstretched hand of the international community, it must expect further sanctions”
Guido Westerwelle
German foreign minister
Q&A: Iran and the nuclear issue
Iran - new sanctions on the way
However, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, said he believed that a diplomatic solution was still possible.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner accused Iran of “playing an extremely dangerous game” and a source in Russia’s foreign ministry was quoted as saying Moscow was “seriously concerned by the latest statements of the Iranian leadership”.
Asked by the BBC if military action by Israel against Iran was now more likely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, called for “all options to be on the table” without being more specific.
‘Without ifs and buts’
“Iran’s announcement of the expansion of its uranium enrichment clearly goes in the wrong direction,” Mr Westerwelle said in a statement in Berlin.
"Iran must know that the international community’s patience is not endless.
"Iran is urged to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] without ifs and buts and to fulfil its international commitments.
“It is clear that if Iran rejects the outstretched hand of the international community, it must expect further sanctions.”
Germany has - along with the US, UK, France, China and Russia - been involved in co-ordinating the UN Security Council’s position on Iran.
Existing UN sanctions are meant to prevent the flow of any items or technology which might aid Iran in enriching uranium or developing nuclear weapon delivery systems.
The sanctions range from actual sales or supplies to dealings with named individuals.
‘We had no intention’
Iran’s proposed new plants would be of a similar size to its main existing enrichment plant at Natanz.
Mr Salehi, who is also a vice-president, said: “We had no intention of building many facilities like the Natanz site but apparently the West doesn’t want to understand Iran’s peaceful message.”
He accused foreign powers of pushing the UN’s nuclear watchdog to rebuke Iran for covering up another uranium enrichment plant near the town of Qom.
“The action by 5+1 [the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany] at the IAEA prompted the [Iranian] government to approve a proposal to build 10 sites like that of Natanz,” Mr Salehi said.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his cabinet at the weekend that parliament had ordered that Iran should produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear energy by 2020.
It therefore needed to make 250-300 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year, he said, which would require 500,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium.
Natanz has nearly 5,000 working centrifuges, with existing plans to build 54,000 in all.
Mr Larijani told reporters in Tehran that it was in foreign powers’ interests to find a diplomatic solution.
“I still think there is a diplomatic opportunity and it is beneficial to them [world powers] to use this, so that Iran continues its work under the framework of the agency [the IAEA] and international supervision,” he said.