Iran nukes chief says enrichment to continue, leaked diagram

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said his country would continue to enrich uranium "with intensity."

Wednesday's remarks by Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani came a day after the release of a diagram showing Iran was working on a mega-nuclear weapon.

The diagram, which was published by The Associated Press, shows that Iranian scientists ran computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would be more than three times as powerful as the bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima during World War II.

According to AP, the diagram was leaked to the news agency by another country "critical of Iran's atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran's nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon."

The graph reportedly had been cited last year in an International Atomic Energy Agency report. The models shown on the diagram could have been created as early as 2008 or 2009, the AP reported. Some diplomats speculate the diagrams could have come from the United States or Israel, the countries that have provided most of the intelligence about Iran's nuclear program to the IAEA.

Abbasi-Davani said, according to the website of the Iranian state television IRIB, "Despite the sanctions, most likely this year we will have a substantial growth in centrifuge machines and we will continue (uranium) enrichment with intensity."