TEHRAN - Iran said it will start making higher-grade reactor fuel today and will add 10 uranium enrichment plants over the next year in a nuclear expansion sure to stoke tensions with the West. The statement by Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation head Ali Akbar Salehi followed orders from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday for work to begin on producing atomic fuel for a Tehran research reactor. It may increase Western suspicions that Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at making bombs, a charge Tehran denies. Iran informed the U.N. nuclear agency in a letter on Monday about its decision to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant to a level of 20 percent for use in the reactor producing medical isotopes, compared with the 3.5 percent it now makes. “Today we handed over the letter,” Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told Iran’s Arabic-language al Alam state television.

The letter said 20 percent enrichment would start on Tuesday with the aim of later converting it into fuel and it invited U.N. inspectors to monitor the process, Soltanieh told Reuters. Salehi earlier told al Alam: “Iran will set up 10 uranium enrichment centres next year.” The Iranian year starts in March. Iran mooted such a plan late last year but gave no time frame. The announcements raise the stakes in Iran’s dispute with the West, although experts doubt Tehran has the technical ability to launch 10 new plants so soon and believe it is finding it harder to obtain crucial components due to U.N. sanctions.

Germany said on Monday Iran’s announced intention to crank up nuclear work showed it was not cooperating with the IAEA, which has called for a nuclear suspension and more inspections. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also said Iran’s latest moves amount to blackmail and new international sanctions are needed. “This is real blackmail...it’s very negative,” Kouchner told a group of journalists. “The only thing that we can do, alas, is apply sanctions given that negotiations are not possible”. A senior Russian lawmaker called on the international community to prepare “serious measures” in response to Iran’s announcement. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, said a strengthening of international economic sanctions should be considered.