Iran's Expanding Nuclear Ambitions

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that his country expanded its contentious uranium enrichment program at a plant in central Iran, a semi-official news agency reported.

"We have started installing 3,000 centrifuges," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

"This is the first step toward industrial production. We will be able to produce our nuclear fuel once we install 60,000 centrifuges," he said, speaking to a group of students in the Iranian capital.

And what will they do with all those centrifuges? That's the billion dollar question, but one practical use is to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Iran has long harbored a desire to obtain nuclear weapons, and the enrichment program appears to be designed with that intention in mind.

Many of the Iranian nuclear facilities are surrounded by anti-aircraft batteries and SAM sites. They're built underground or in reinforced bunkers - all designed to thwart a potential air raid such as the Israeli raid that destroyed Iraq's nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981.