Iran will begin building a third facility for enriching uranium in 2011, said Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Islamic Republic's Atomic Energy Organization on Sunday, according to an AFP report.
Iran has been searching for new locations to build uranium enrichment facilities since the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced the construction of ten such plants late last year.
RELATED:Iran to open nuke plant in Sept.US may be ready to meet with IranSalehi did not give details as to the location of the new facility, but
he has said in the past that any new uranium enrichment sites would be
constructed in areas that are not vulnerable to air strikes.
Iran possesses one functioning uranium enrichment plant in the city of
Natanz and is currently constructing a second facility in the city of
Fordo.
The UN, US and European Union have passed sanctions against the Islamic
Republic for continuing to enrich uranium which they believe Iran will
use to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists that the uranium will be used
for peaceful, energy creating purposes.
In an article published last week in the
Atlantic,
US journalist Jeffery Goldberg came to the conclusion, after taking an
unofficial survey of Israeli officials, that there is a better than
fifty percent chance that
Israel will attack Iran within a year's time in order to prevent the Islamic Republic from creating a nuclear weapon.